St Petersburg, 21 October. Vladimir Putin told US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia is broadly ready to resume three-way talks with the US and Ukraine in mid-November, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said after their meeting in St Petersburg, which lasted almost three hours.
The main topic on which Moscow is ready to return to talks is building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the end of the conflict. A new round, according to Ushakov, may take place in Abu Dhabi and is planned at expert level; the make-up of the Russian delegation will be decided by Putin, and it may include military officials and presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky. Putin and Witkoff, Ushakov said, discussed in concrete terms the scheme for a possible resumption of talks with representatives of the three countries.
Witkoff brought documents setting out approaches to a settlement and briefed Putin on the new approaches of Europe and Kyiv worked out during the talks in Oslo. Witkoff himself called the Oslo talks productive; Ushakov, however, said that among the new elements in the approaches of Kyiv and the European Union there was not that much that was useful for a settlement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin would study and assess all the proposals. Answering a question from the Vesti programme, Ushakov said that things were moving towards an end to the conflict.
A summit was also discussed. According to Ushakov, the Chinese side is preparing a possible meeting of Putin, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, which would be added to the programme if circumstances allow; everyone, he said, is interested in this meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit, although one such meeting will not resolve the Ukraine crisis. After his talks with Witkoff, Putin met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in St Petersburg and asked him to pass on his greetings to Xi Jinping.
At the start of the meeting it emerged that Russia had released Stephen Hubbard, an American convicted on mercenary charges, whose release Trump had requested the day before; he was handed over to Witkoff at Pulkovo airport. Peskov described the release as a gesture of goodwill, while Trump said the US had not handed anyone over to Russia in exchange. Putin also expressed interest in restoring economic cooperation with the US, and Witkoff, on Trump's behalf, thanked him for the decision on the "diesel deal." Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to Ushakov, was unable to fly in for health reasons and, as Peskov said, joined the meeting remotely.
What it means: After the talks in Oslo the US envoy brought documents to Russia, and Moscow named the timing, venue and topic of a possible return to three-way talks: mid-November, Abu Dhabi, a post-war security system. At the same time Putin released an American whose release Trump had asked for.
Who benefits: Washington gets Moscow's readiness in principle for the format Witkoff was counting on: he had hoped Putin would consider resuming talks between Russia, the US and Ukraine. Moscow puts its main topic, a security system, on the table and develops economic contacts with the US. According to Ushakov, Witkoff said Hubbard's release would be appreciated by Trump and the American public. The sources do not give Kyiv's reaction to the outcome of the meeting.
Background: The meeting was the ninth contact between Putin and Witkoff; Ushakov called such contacts a useful complement to the presidents' conversations.
List of sources used: TASS, TASS, TASS, RBC, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, RBC, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS, TASS
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
