Photo: kremlin.ru / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Russia is willing “in principle” to restart talks with the United States and Ukraine on ending the war, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday, after Putin met US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg. Ushakov suggested a new round could take place around November 10 in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The three-way negotiations have been stalled since February. Kyiv and its European partners have pushed for months to bring Moscow back to the table, while Russia held out, arguing that it has the upper hand on the battlefield.
A technical-level meeting first
According to a US official, Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and another key negotiator, proposed a trilateral meeting at the technical level during talks in Oslo on Tuesday. The official said Ukraine accepted the idea in Oslo and Russia agreed to it in St Petersburg a day later.
We received feedback that Russia… supports a trilateral meeting between our teams. The American side is proposing to do this as soon as possible. We are in favour of it.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
Ushakov said the talks must focus on building a security system for Russia and Ukraine once the conflict ends, and he described the proposals Witkoff brought as not very “useful”. He also said Putin had told the envoy that Russian forces were advancing along the whole front line, a claim Ukraine and its European allies dispute. Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, who met Witkoff in Oslo, told the broadcaster NRK the next meeting would probably be held in mid-November.
Witkoff called the St Petersburg talks “constructive”. Kushner, who joined by video link, said hard work remained but there was a real chance to build a framework for lasting peace. Separately, Zelensky told Fox News he would accept freezing the war along the current front line as a minimum first step, with security guarantees for Ukraine to be discussed after that.
American prisoner released
Before the meeting, Russia freed Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher from Michigan who had been arrested in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum in April 2022. He was serving a sentence of six years and 10 months after a closed-door trial on mercenary charges, which his lawyer and family have always denied. The Kremlin said Putin released him at Trump’s request and because of his poor health.
Trump said no prisoner swap had been needed. Witkoff’s description of Putin as a “humanitarian” for the release drew criticism from lawmakers of both parties in Washington, while Vice-President JD Vance defended the envoy as a diplomat doing his job.
Why it matters
The opening comes at a tense moment in relations between Kyiv and Washington. Trump has recently said Ukraine needs a new president, has blamed Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries for rising fuel prices, and drew criticism for easing sanctions to let Russian diesel reach world markets. Ukraine has also complained about gaps in US intelligence sharing and speed limits on Starlink that hurt its drone operations, which US officials deny requesting.
No date or venue has yet been formally announced. The next step is a technical-level meeting of negotiators from the three countries, which officials on all sides now say could happen within weeks.
