• Witkoff holds conversations with Putin in Russia.
• The meeting comes as American tensions with China, Iran Spike.
• Lecture on full ceasefire in Ukraine appears stopped.

Moscow: US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held conversations with President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Skt. Petersburg about the search for a peace deal on Ukraine when Trump told Russia to “get moving”.

Putin was shown on State TV greeting Witkoff in St. Petersburg’s presidential library at the start of the negotiations. The Izvestia The news output released previous video of Witkoff, who left a hotel in the city, accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment utilization.

Witkoff has appeared as a key figure in the approximation reduction between Moscow and Washington in the midst of the Russian side of potential joint investments in the Arctic and in Russian rare earth minerals.

However, the negotiations are coming at a time when dialogue in US Russia is aiming to agree on a ceasefire in front of a possible peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine seems to have stopped disagreements around the conditions of a full break in hostilities.

Trump, who has shown signs of losing patience, has talked about imposing secondary sanctions against countries buying Russian oil if he feels Moscow is pulling his feet on a Ukrainian deal.

Friday he said in a post about truth social: “Russia has to move. For many people (s) dying, thousands a week, in a terrible and meaningless war – a war that should never have happened and would not have happened if I was president !!!”

Putin has said that he is in principle ready to agree on a full truce, but has said that many crucial conditions have not yet been agreed on how it would work and has said that what he calls the fundamental causes of the war has not yet been treated.

Specifically, he has said that Ukraine should not join NATO, that the size of its army should be limited and that Russia should get the entire territory in the four Ukrainian regions, it claims as its own despite not fully controlling any of them.

As Moscow controls almost 20% of Ukraine and Russian forces that continue to move on on the battlefield, the Kremlin believes that Russia is in a strong position when it comes to negotiations and that Ukraine should admit.

Kyiv says Russia’s terms would constitute a capitulation.

Trump-Putin meeting?

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Witkoff may have discussed the possibility of the Russian leader meeting Trump face to face.

Putin and Trump have spoken by phone, but have not yet met in person since the American leader returned to the White House in January for another four -year period.

However, Peskov played Witkoff-Putin negotiations and told Russian state media before starting that the US broadcast visit would not be “significant” and no breakthrough was expected.

He said the meeting would be a chance for Russia to express its “concerns”. Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of violating a moratorium of beating each other’s energy infrastructure.

The meeting, the third this year between Putin and Witkoff, is coming at a time when US tensions with Iran and China, both of which are closing allies in Moscow, have been increased by Tehran’s nuclear program and a sprouting trade war with Beijing.

Witkoff, who visited a synagogue in Skt. Petersburg earlier on Friday, due in Oman on Saturday for conversations with Iran about his nuclear program. Trump has threatened Tehran with military action if it does not agree with an agreement. Moscow has repeatedly offered her help to try to get a diplomatic solution.

The United States and Russian officials said they had made progress during conversations in Istanbul on Thursday against normalizing their diplomatic missions as they begin to rebuild ties.

A February meeting between Witkoff and Putin culminated with the US envoy flying home with Marc Fogel, an American teacher, as Washington had said, was wrongfully withheld by Russia.

A Russian-American spa worker Ksenia Karelina, who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison in Russia, was exchanged with Arthur Petrov on Thursday, as the United States had accused of forming a global smuggling ring to transfer sensitive electronics to Russia’s military.