US to offer Putin face-to-face talks with Trump and Zelenskyy in new peace push
The United States is set to offer Russian President Vladimir Putin direct talks with President Donald Trump and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy. As part of an effort to secure a ceasefire, US special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Russia on Wednesday and put forward the proposal.
Witkoff's trip to Russia for discussions about peace proposals has been announced. If the proposed three-way leaders' meeting takes place, it would be the first such summit since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
The proposal for three-way leaders' negotiations on a peace plan was announced at a press conference following talks in Norway on Tuesday between Zelenskyy and Witkoff. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who hosted the talks, gave the information to reporters.
Støre said Witkoff will travel to St Petersburg on Wednesday, where he will meet the Russian leadership and set out ideas from the Norway meeting and proposals worked on by European and American colleagues, and possibly pave the way for a meeting at leaders' level.
'We have hosted today, I would say, good and constructive talks — necessary after events of the last week,' Støre told reporters. The meeting in Oslo came after days of high tensions between Ukraine and the US president.
Previous attempts to get Putin to meet Zelenskyy in person have fallen flat, with the Kremlin recently insisting that a meeting could only take place in Moscow — a condition widely seen as difficult for Kyiv to accept.
Zelenskyy told the press conference that the day had been positive. He said issues around the future of Ukrainian territory could only be discussed by leaders, and that any peace settlement would require genuine security guarantees.
A deal would only be acceptable if Ukraine is involved in designing it, Zelenskyy said — making clear that no settlement arranged without Kyiv at the table would be accepted.
Alongside this diplomacy, another debate is under way inside Europe. Several EU leaders want to revive the bitter debate over raiding Russia's frozen assets to fund Ukraine's war.
Finland's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has told POLITICO that the US is going against its allies, and warns that Europe must find a way to keep Ukraine in the fight, even if it means reopening the debate over using Russian assets.
Altogether, Witkoff's Russia trip and the proposed three-way summit are an attempt to bring new momentum to diplomacy aimed at ending the Ukraine war. How far the initiative goes will depend on the Kremlin's response to the offer.
