Moscow (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The Kremlin indicated that discussions with U.S. President Donald Trump’s team were progressing positively, though it is premature to anticipate immediate outcomes because of the extent of damage inflicted on relations by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
Trump, who claims he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly stated his desire to end the “bloodbath” of the three-year war in Ukraine, which his administration now portrays as a proxy conflict between the United States and Russia, reflecting Moscow’s perspective.
After his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, held talks with President Vladimir Putin, Trump said on Saturday that discussions aimed at ending the war might be going well, but “there’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up. “
Will Putin-Trump talks lead to real change?
“Everything is going very well,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov informed Pavel Zarubin, the leading Kremlin reporter for Russian state television, about the differing perspectives on relations between Moscow and other entities when questioned Washington.
Contacts were being made at several levels, Peskov said, including via the foreign ministry, intelligence agencies and Putin’s investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
“But, of course, it is impossible to expect any instant results,”
Peskov said, referring to the harm inflicted on bilateral relations during Biden’s administration.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 ignited the most severe clash between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a period marked as the closest the two Cold War superpowers came to engaging in intentional nuclear conflict.
What role does Witkoff play in Ukraine talks?
While Witkoff met with Putin on Friday in St. Petersburg, the former Russian imperial capital, to discuss pursuing a peace agreement for Ukraine, Trump urged Russia to “get moving.” State TV showed Putin welcoming Witkoff, who placed his hand over his heart in greeting, at the beginning of their discussions. Subsequently, state news agencies reported that the talks extended beyond four hours.
When asked if a Putin-Trump meeting was getting closer, the Kremlin’s Peskov stated that the two powers were “walking along this path together very patiently,” but that restoring relations required serious and painstaking effort. His remarks indicated that such a meeting “demands more work and time. “
Conversely, European leaders and Ukraine characterise the 2022 invasion as a land grab reminiscent of imperial conquests by Putin. They have consistently insisted that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield, despite Moscow’s forces currently controlling almost one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Putin frames the war in Ukraine as a struggle against a weakening West, which he claims humiliated Russia following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by expanding the NATO military alliance and intruding into what he regards as Moscow’s sphere of influence, particularly Ukraine.
