US envoy to meet Ukrainian negotiators after lengthy talks with Putin

The White House has confirmed that US special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council head Rustem Umerov in Miami on December 4.

The talks follow Witkoff’s nearly five-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on December 2 — negotiations that, according to the Kremlin, produced “no compromise” on ending the war in Ukraine, Caliber.Az reports via BBC.

US President Donald Trump described the discussions — attended by his son-in-law Jared Kushner — as “reasonably good,” while stressing that it was premature to predict the outcome because “it does take two to tango.” Asked whether Witkoff and Kushner believed Putin genuinely wanted to end the war, Trump said their impression was that “[Putin] would like to end the war.”

The meeting in Moscow came after several days of US consultations with Ukrainian and European leaders, amid concerns that a draft peace proposal was leaning too heavily toward Russian demands.

Kyiv and its European partners maintain that even under a peace agreement, the most effective deterrent against future Russian aggression would be granting Ukraine NATO membership. Moscow fiercely opposes the idea, and Trump has repeatedly indicated he does not intend to support Ukraine’s entry into the alliance. The Kremlin said on December 3 that the NATO question was a “key issue” discussed in the Moscow talks.

On the ground, fighting continues in the eastern city of Pokrovsk, where Russian troops have not established full control. However, Russian officials appear confident that their battlefield message has reached Washington. Russian forces have made incremental advances in recent weeks, seizing around 701 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory in November, according to AFP analysis based on data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Russia now controls 19.3% of Ukraine’s territory.