By Gleb Bryanski and Mark Trevelyan
MOSCOW (Reuters) -U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Wednesday, two days before the expiry of a deadline set by President Donald Trump for Russia to agree to peace in Ukraine or face new sanctions.
Witkoff flew to Moscow on a last-minute mission to seek a breakthrough in the 3-1/2-year war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion. Russian state TV showed a brief clip of him shaking hands with Putin at the start of their meeting.
Trump, increasingly frustrated with Putin over the lack of progress towards peace, has threatened to impose heavy tariffs on countries that buy Russian exports.
He is exerting particular pressure on India, which along with China is a huge buyer of Russian oil. The Kremlin says threats to penalise countries that trade with Russia are illegal.
It was not clear what Russia might offer to Witkoff in order to stave off Trump’s threat.
Bloomberg and independent Russian news outlet The Bell reported that the Kremlin might propose a moratorium on air strikes by Russia and Ukraine – an idea that was mentioned last week by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko during a meeting with Putin.
Such a move, if agreed, would fall well short of the full and immediate ceasefire that Ukraine and the U.S. have been seeking for months. But it would offer some relief to both sides.
Since the two sides resumed direct peace talks in May, Russia has carried out its heaviest air attacks of the war, killing at least 72 people in the capital Kyiv alone. Trump last week called the Russian attacks “disgusting”.
Ukraine continues to strike Russian refineries and oil depots, which it has hit many times.
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Wednesday that a full ceasefire and a leaders’ summit were required. “The war must stop and for now this is on Russia,” he posted on Telegram.
‘LAST-DITCH EFFORT’
Putin is unlikely to bow to Trump’s sanctions ultimatum because he believes he is winning the war and his military goals take precedence over his desire to improve relations with the U.S., three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters.
“The visit of Witkoff is a last-ditch effort to find a face-saving solution for both sides. I don’t think, however, that there will be anything of a compromise between the two,” said Gerhard Mangott, an Austrian analyst and member of a group of Western academics and journalists who have met regularly with Putin over the years.
“Russia will insist it is prepared to have a ceasefire, but (only) under the conditions that it has formulated for the last two or three years already,” he said in a telephone interview.
“Trump will be under pressure to do what he has announced – to raise tariffs for all the countries buying oil and gas, and uranium probably as well, from Russia.”
The Russian sources told Reuters that Putin was sceptical that yet more U.S. sanctions would have much of an impact after successive waves of economic penalties during 3-1/2 years of war.
The Russian leader does not want to anger Trump, and he realises that he may be spurning a chance to improve relations with Washington and the West, but his war goals are more important to him, two of the sources said.
Putin’s conditions for peace include a legally binding pledge NATO will not expand eastwards, Ukrainian neutrality, protection for Russian speakers and acceptance of Russia’s territorial gains in the war, Russian sources have said.
Zelenskiy has said Ukraine would never recognise Russia’s sovereignty over its conquered regions and that Kyiv retains the sovereign right to decide whether it wants to join NATO.
Witkoff, a real estate billionaire, had no diplomatic experience before joining Trump’s team in January, but has been simultaneously tasked with seeking ceasefires in the Ukraine and Gaza wars, as well as negotiating in the crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Critics have portrayed him as out of his depth when pitched into a head-to-head negotiation with Putin, Russia’s paramount leader for the past 25 years, and at times accused him of echoing the Kremlin’s narrative. In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson in March, for example, Witkoff said there was no reason why Russia would want to absorb Ukraine or bite off more of its territory, and it was “preposterous” to think that Putin would want to send his army marching across Europe.
Ukraine and many of its European allies say the opposite. Putin denies any designs on NATO territory, and Moscow has repeatedly cast such charges as evidence of European hostility and “Russophobia”.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski in Moscow, Mark Trevelyan in London; additional reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv, Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Ksenia Orlova in Moscow and Gleb Stoyarov in Tbilisi; Editing by Alex Richardson)
