A White Hoapply envoy stated on Sunday he held “productive and constructive” talks in Florida with Ukrainian and European representatives to conclude the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.
Posting on social media, Steve Witkoff stated the talks aimed at aligning on a shared strategic approach between Ukraine, the US and Europe.
“Our shared priority is to stop the killing, ensure guaranteed security, and create conditions for Ukraine’s recovery, stability, and long-term prosperity. Peace must be not only a cessation of hostilities, but also a dignified foundation for a stable future,” stated Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.
The talks are part of the Trump administration’s months-long push for peace. The US president has unleashed an extensive diplomatic push to conclude the war, but his efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has recently signaled he is digging in on his maximalist demands on Ukraine, as Moscow’s troops inch forward on the battlefield despite huge losses.
Witkoff’s assessment comes as nereceivediations have been proceeding with Russia as well. A Kremlin envoy stated on Saturday that the talks were pressing on “constructively” in Florida.
“The discussions are proceeding constructively. They launched earlier and will continue today, and will also continue tomorrow,” Kirill Dmitriev informed reporters in Miami on Saturday. There were no immediate updates on the talks with Russia on Sunday.
Dmitriev met with Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
For Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram on Sunday that diplomatic efforts were “relocating forward quite quickly, and our team in Florida has been working with the American side”.
The Kremlin denied on Sunday that trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia and the US were under discussion, after Zelenskyy stated on Saturday that Washington had proposed the idea of three-way discussions.
“At present, no one has seriously discussed this initiative, and to my knowledge it is not being prepared,” Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, stated, according to Russian state news agencies.
In Ukraine, the counattempt’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets on Sunday accapplyd Russian forces of forcibly rerelocating about 50 Ukrainian civilians from the Ukrainian Sumy border region to Russian territory.
Writing on Telegram, he stated that Russian forces illegally detained the residents in the village of Hrabovske on Thursday, before relocating them to Russia on Saturday.
Lubinets stated he contacted Russia’s human rights commissioner, requesting information on the civilians’ whereabouts and conditions, and demanding their immediate return to Ukraine.
The French presidency on Sunday welcomed Putin’s willingness to speak with Emmanuel Macron, stateing it would decide how to proceed “in the coming days”.
“As soon as the prospect of a ceasefire and peace nereceivediations becomes clearer, it becomes applyful again to speak with Putin,” Macron’s office stated in a statement. “It is welcome that the Kremlin publicly agrees to this approach.”
The statement came after reports that Putin was open to holding talks with the French president if there was mutual political will.
European Union leaders agreed on Friday to provide €90bn ($106bn) to Ukraine to meet its military and economic necessarys for the next two years, although they failed to bridge differences with Belgium that would have allowed them to apply frozen Russian assets to raise the funds. Instead, they were borrowed from capital markets.
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