Witkoff meets Putin as Trump urges Russia to ‘get moving’

US special envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to “get moving” on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

It will be Witkoff’s third meeting with Putin this year, during which the US has failed to get Russia to agree to a full ceasefire with Ukraine.

Trump has previously expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war.”

The meeting comes as the UK and Germany chaired a gathering of Ukraine’s allies in Brussels, where 50 nations agreed €21bn (£18.2bn) in military aid for Kyiv.

Before the talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was “no need to expect breakthroughs” as the “process of normalising relations is ongoing”.

Before his talks with Putin, Witkoff first met Kirill Dmitriev at the Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg where a conference was being held on stainless steel and the Russian market.

Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington DC last week and was the most senior Russian official to go to the US since the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Asked if discussions could include setting up a date for Putin and Trump to meet, Peskov said: “Let’s see. It depends on what Witkoff has come with.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin of prolonging the war during a visit on Friday to the site of a 4 April Russian missile attack on his home town of Kryvyi Rih. The attack killed 19 people, including nine children.

“We have information that at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting as part of Russia’s occupation forces,” he said.

“This means Russia is clearly trying to prolong the war even by using Chinese lives.”

The president laid flowers in front of photos of Herman Tripolets, nine, and seven-year-olds Arina Samodina and Radyslav Yatsko.

He later reiterated a call for air defence systems “to protect lives and our cities”.

Writing on social media, Zelensky said: “We discussed this with President Trump – Ukraine is not just asking, we’re ready to purchase these additional systems.

“Only powerful weapons can truly be relied upon to protect life when you have a neighbour like Russia.”

Trump has previously claimed he could end the Ukraine-Russia conflict “in 24 hours”. On Friday, he declared that it would not have happened at all if he’d been in the White House in 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“A war that should ld [sic] have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!,” he wrote.

Source:BBC