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Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday amid the White House’s faltering efforts to broker an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Witkoff met the Russian president in the Kremlin on Friday afternoon for the fourth time this year, with violence still raging more than three years after Putin ordered the full-scale invasion.
A senior Russian military officer was assassinated on Friday morning as Witkoff’s plane approached the capital. Officials said Yaroslav Moskalik, the deputy head of the Russian general staff’s main operations directorate, was killed in a car bombing outside a residential building in Balashikha, an eastern suburb of Moscow.
In eastern Ukraine, a Russian drone attack on the city of Pavlohrad killed three people and injured 10 others when one hit an apartment building. An elderly father and his son were killed in the nearby village of Yarova, when a Russian 250kg guided aerial bomb crashed into their home.
The attacks followed the deadliest air strike on Kyiv this year early on Thursday, which killed 12 civilians and wounded 90 more — and a rare rebuke from Trump in which he urged Russia’s president to halt the “unnecessary” assaults. “Vladimir, STOP!” he wrote on his Truth Social network.
Trump and Witkoff have spoken optimistically about restoring US relations with Russia and deepening the two countries’ economic relationship.
In a sign of the importance of economic issues in the talks, Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund boss, joined Putin alongside the Russian president’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.
But the push for a quick end to Putin’s war in Ukraine — which has led the US to adopt several of the Kremlin’s own positions — has so far largely foundered on Moscow’s hardline demands.
Putin told Witkoff at their last meeting in St Petersburg this month that Russia was prepared to relinquish its claims to areas of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions that remain under Kyiv’s control.
The US then pushed a peace plan that involved recognising Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula and at least acknowledging its de facto control of the parts of the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — it currently occupies.
In an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday, Trump said that “Crimea will stay with Russia” and reiterated his claim that Kyiv was responsible for the war. “I think what caused the war to start was when they started talking about joining Nato,” he said.
But Ukraine has ruled out agreeing to any proposal that recognises Russia’s annexation, prompting Trump to lash out at President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for holding up the deal.
It is unclear what, if any, further concessions Russia has offered to make or whether it has agreed to other elements of Trump’s plan.
Trump said on Thursday that Russia had made a “pretty big concession” in “stopping taking the whole country” and suggested Ukraine would have to give up more territory as part of any peace deal.
The Kremlin has ruled out some points of the plan, such as a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, while pushing for others including recognising Crimea and lifting western sanctions against Russia.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said on Thursday that Moscow was “ready to reach a deal, but there are still some specific points — elements of this deal which need to be fine-tuned”.
Lavrov said “there are several signs we are moving in the right direction”, citing Trump’s acknowledgment of “the need to address the root causes of the situation”, which he said included ending Ukraine’s drive to join Nato.
The US has ruled out any prospect of Ukraine joining the alliance or restoring control over its full territory — two of Russia’s main demands.
Trump repeatedly suggested walking away from US efforts to broker a deal if a result is not quickly met, leaving Kyiv facing the prospect of defending itself against Russia’s army with significantly reduced western military support.
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