Witkoff engages with Putin while Trump calls on Russia to expedite efforts for a ceasefire in Ukraine

 

As an Israeli hostage marks his 48th birthday, his wife anxiously waits for any sign of communication.

Recently, US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, where Donald Trump urged the Russian leader to "get moving" towards a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The Kremlin reported that their meeting lasted over four hours, concentrating on various aspects of a resolution for Ukraine. Witkoff's discussions with Putin this year have been described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as "productive."

Trump has publicly voiced his frustration with the ongoing negotiations. On social media, he stated, "Russia has to get moving. Too many people are DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war."

This development comes amid claims from Trump's Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, who denied suggesting the possibility of partitioning Ukraine.

It's been reported that he mentioned Russia's military could remain in the occupied eastern regions, likening the situation to post-World War Two Berlin.

Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had "misrepresented" what he said. "I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine's sovereignty," he wrote on X, adding: "I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine."

Neither the White House nor Kyiv reacted to the comments immediately. The BBC has asked the Times for its response.

Earlier on Friday, European nations agreed €21bn ($24bn; £18bn) in military aid for Kyiv.

At the event, Europe's defence ministers said they saw no sign of an end to the war.

Ahead of the Putin-Witkoff talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was "no need to expect breakthroughs" as the "process of normalising relations is ongoing".

Asked whether 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."

Beforehand, Witkoff had a meeting with Dmitriev at the Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg, where a conference was held on stainless steel and the Russian market.

Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington last week and was the most senior Russian official to go to the US since the country's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Meanwhile 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.

He also alleged that hundreds of Chinese nationals were fighting with the Russian army. It comes after Ukraine said it had captured two Chinese nationals.

"We have information that at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting as part of Russia's occupation forces," Zelensky said.

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

Zelensky 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".

"We discussed this with President Trump - Ukraine is not just asking, we're ready to purchase these additional systems," he wrote on social media.

"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.

In February US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first face-to-face talks since the invasion. Officials have also been meeting to discuss restoring full diplomatic relations.

Trump has also had a fractious relationship with Zelensky since his second term as US president began, culminating in an angry confrontation in the Oval Office in February.

The US attempted to broker a limited ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, only for it to stall when the Kremlin asked for sanctions imposed after it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour to be lifted.

Trump has since said he is "very angry" and "pissed off" with Putin over the lack of progress in agreeing a truce between Kyiv and Moscow.

Russia's ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the US is not its ally.

He said America and Russia had not been able to go from "total distrust to alignment in two months" since Trump returned to the White House.

"We have too many disagreements," he said. "But we are working on these disagreements step by step in different areas."

Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow went ahead with a prisoner swap.

Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American, was sentenced to 12 years in jail in Russia for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity when the war began in February 2022.

The Los Angeles resident was freed on Thursday morning and exchanged for Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023.

He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the military.