President Donald Trump’s special envoy is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday for highly anticipated talks that Washington hopes will convince the Kremlin to end his war in Ukraine.
Fresh off negotiations with Ukrainian officials in Florida this weekend, Steve Witkoff is expected to lay out for Putin a version of the peace plan that has been agreed with Kyiv, hoping the Russian leader will compromise on his hardline demands.
The details of the revamped plan have not been released. The original proposal approved by Trump last month was seen as heavily biased toward Russia, and would force Kyiv to cede its territories to Moscow, including the land that it currently still controls. It would also limit the size of Kyiv’s army and bar Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin greets U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff prior to their talks in Moscow on August 6.Gavriil Grigorov / Pool via AFP-Getty Images
The proposal blindsided Kyiv, which launched a storm of talks and negotiations in Europe and and the U.S. over the last two weeks to try to amend the plan and make it more palatable to Ukraine. Trump initially imposed a Thanksgiving deadline for Kyiv to accept the deal, but has since said that he wants an agreement as soon as possible.
Putin signaled last week that he was ready for a “serious” discussion with the U.S. and said that a version of the plan that was agreed during talks with Ukrainians in Geneva, Switzerland, last month could form the “framework” of a final peace settlement. Still, he said his army had the upper hand on the battlefield and if no agreement was reached, he would get what he wanted by force.
It comes as the government of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been weakened by a major corruption scandal. His powerful chief of staff and top negotiator, Andriy Yermak, resigned last week after being implicated in the probe.
