US envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Ukraine national security chief in Miami

Original article by Pjotr Sauer and agencies

The US special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Ukraine’s national security council chief, Rustem Umerov, in Miami on Thursday as Washington steps up its diplomatic push to secure a pathway to peace in Ukraine.

Witkoff, accompanied by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, spent nearly five hours in talks with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Tuesday. Moscow later said the meeting had not brought the sides any closer to a peace agreement.

Trump on Wednesday described the discussions in Moscow as “reasonably good”, though he acknowledged that the path ahead for Ukraine peace talks remained unclear.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Putin would like to make a deal but “what comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango”. The president said the US had “something pretty well worked out” with Ukraine.

Putin struck a belligerent tone on Thursday, telling India Today that Russia would seize full control of eastern Donbas by force unless Ukrainian troops withdrew – a demand Kyiv has categorically rejected.

“Either we liberate these territories by force of arms, or Ukrainian troops leave these territories,” Putin said before his visit to Delhi.

He said Moscow had refused to accept parts of the latest US peace proposal on Ukraine, describing the negotiations as “complex work”.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has ruled out giving up territory it currently holds, and on Wednesday he said his team was preparing for meetings in the US, adding that dialogue with Trump’s representatives would continue.

“Only by taking Ukraine’s interests into account is a dignified peace possible,” he said.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, took a stronger line, urging Putin to “stop wasting the world’s time”.

Meanwhile, a leaked transcript of a high-level call, published by Der Spiegel, appears to reveal deep anxiety and mistrust among European leaders over Washington’s role in the negotiations.

The call, held on Monday, reportedly included the French president, Emmanuel Macron; the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz; the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte; and Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, as well as Zelenskyy and others. According to the transcript, several participants voiced fears that the US could abandon Ukraine at a critical moment.

“There is a possibility that the US will betray Ukraine on the issue of territory without providing clarity on security guarantees,” Macron said, warning of “great danger” for Zelenskyy if Kyiv were left exposed.

Merz urged Zelenskyy to be “extremely careful in the coming days”, adding: “They are playing games, both with you and with us,” a remark apparently referring to Witkoff and Kushner, who held closed-door talks with Putin on Tuesday.

Finland’s Stubb appeared to back Merz’s assessment. “We cannot leave Ukraine and Volodymyr alone with these guys,” he said, in what seemed to be another pointed reference to Witkoff and Kushner.

The call appears to be the second high-level leak in recent days, after Bloomberg published transcripts of two intercepted conversations, one between Witkoff and the senior Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, and the other between Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian presidential envoy.

Interactive

Moscow has in recent weeks sought to drive a wedge between Washington and European capitals in an effort to isolate Ukraine diplomatically and sideline Europe from any future settlement.

On Tuesday Putin accused European powers of trying to sink the peace talks by proposing ideas that were absolutely unacceptable to Moscow, while also issuing threats that Russia was ready for war with Europe if it started one.

Ukraine and its European allies have in turn accused Putin of feigning interest in peace efforts, with the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, saying on Wednesday that Russia should “end the bluster and the bloodshed and be ready to come to the table and to support a just and lasting peace”.

Margus Tsahkna, the Estonian foreign minister, said at a meeting of European Nato foreign ministers: “What we see is that Putin has not changed any course. He’s pushing more aggressively on the battlefield. It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t want to have any kind of peace.”

Rutte said Ukraine’s partners would keep supplying military aid to ensure pressure was maintained on Moscow.

On Wednesday the European Commission announced it would move ahead with controversial plans to fund Ukraine with a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets. In a concession to concerns raised by Belgium, which hosts most of the assets, the EU executive has also proposed the option of an EU loan based on common borrowing.

EU leaders will be asked to decide on the options later this month, as Ukraine faces a looming funding crunch.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, the UN general assembly called for the immediate and unconditional return of Ukrainian children “forcibly transferred” to Russia. Ukraine has accused Russia of abducting at least 20,000 Ukrainian children since the start of the conflict in February 2022.

The assembly adopted the non-binding resolution by a vote of 91-12, with 57 abstentions. Russia was among the countries rejecting the measure.

With Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse