Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin for high-stakes peace talks, hours after a senior Russian military official was killed in a car explosion near Moscow.
Trump has played up Witkoff’s visit – his fourth to Russia in recent months – claiming a deal on ending the war in Ukraine was within reach. “The next few days are going to be very important. Meetings are taking place right now,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “I think we’re going to make a deal … I think we’re getting very close.”
But no apparent breakthrough was reached on Friday. Putin’s senior aide Yuri Ushakov, who was present at the talks, said the discussions were “constructive and quite useful” and noted that the two sides had “narrowed differences”.
In comments to journalists, Ushakov said the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine had also been discussed.
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Witkoff had left Moscow carrying a message for Trump. There was no immediate comment from Witkoff on the outcome of the meeting.
At the start of the talks, the Kremlin published a short clip showing Putin and Witkoff – who holds no formal diplomatic credentials – shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries in the Kremlin before sitting down on opposite sides of a white oval table to start their meeting behind closed doors.
Putin was flanked in the meeting by Ushakov and his investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Three hours later, Witkoff’s car was seen leaving the Kremlin.
Although Trump has repeatedly claimed he was close to ending the war, now in its fourth year, his efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine have so far yielded little results, stalled by Moscow’s hardline demands.
Reuters on Friday published two sets of documents outlining the US and Ukrainian proposals for ending the war, revealing significant differences on issues ranging from territorial concessions to sanctions.
It remains unclear whether Moscow, which has consistently rejected an immediate ceasefire, would agree to the US proposal, despite the major concessions it offers the Kremlin, including allowing it to retain territory it has captured.
Trump admitted on Friday that the talks were “very fragile” and said he had no deadline for achieving peace, having previously claimed he could end the war “in 24 hours”.
In an interview with Time magazine published on Friday, Trump also said that “Crimea will stay with Russia”, the latest example of the US leader putting pressure on Ukraine to make concessions to end the war while it remains under siege.
Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, later insisted the territory is “the property of the Ukrainian people”.
“Our position is unchanged,” he told reporters in Kyiv. “The constitution of Ukraine says that all the temporarily occupied territories … belong to Ukraine.”
Witkoff’s visit came hours after a senior Russian general was blown up outside his apartment in what appears to have been the latest Ukrainian operation deep inside Russian territory.
The Russian authorities named the officer as Lt Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, the deputy head of the main operations directorate of the general staff of the Russian armed forces. The blast was similar in nature to previous attacks on Russians that were later claimed by Ukraine.
The apparent Ukrainian assassination is unlikely to sit well with the Trump administration, which has been desperate to show tangible progress on peace before Trump’s 100th day in office next week.
Despite Putin’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire and continued missile strikes on Ukraine, the US president has criticised Zelenskyy repeatedly over the stalled peace talks while adopting a more cautious tone toward the Russian leader.
The Russian investigative committee said the explosions were caused by the detonation of an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel. The committee, which investigates major crimes, said it had opened a criminal case.
Baza, a Telegram channel with sources in Russia’s law enforcement agencies, said a bomb in a parked car in the town of Balashikha, in the Moscow region, was detonated remotely when the officer, who lived locally, walked past.
A video circulating on Russian social media captured the moment the car exploded, while additional images showed the burnt-out vehicle.
The Kremlin blamed Ukraine for the killing, with Peskov saying Kyiv was engaging in “terrorist activities on Russian territory”. Ukraine has not yet commented on the incident.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials whom Kyiv has accused of committing war crimes in the country. Little is known, however, about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells involved in assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure in Russia and Russian-controlled areas.
Last December, Ukraine’s security services targeted another senior Russian general, Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who was killed after an explosive device hidden in an electric scooter detonated outside an apartment building in Moscow.
At the time, Keith Kellogg, Trump’s appointed special representative for Ukraine and Russia, criticised the killing, saying it could have violated the rules of warfare.
Apart from military figures, Ukraine has targeted prominent Russian pro-war propagandists including Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue, who was killed in 2022 when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving.
Moskalik, 59, was part of several high-profile Russian foreign delegations in recent years, including in at least two rounds of talks with Ukrainian and western officials, in 2015 and 2019, as well as a 2018 visit to the Assad regime in Syria. Insiders close to the defence ministry say his influence within the Russian military was on the rise.
Mikhail Zvinchuk, a popular Russian military blogger with ties to the defence establishment, said: “According to chatter behind the scenes, one scenario for personnel reshuffling at the general staff had Moskalik being considered as a potential head of the national defence management centre, primarily due to his methodical approach and thoughtfulness.”
