15 April 2025

US special envoy meets Putin as Trump urges Russia to 'get moving' on Ukraine ceasefire

Dearbail Jordan

US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday, as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to "get moving" on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said the meeting lasted for more than four hours and focused on "aspects of a Ukrainian settlement". The meeting, Witkoff's third with Putin this year, was described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as "productive".

Trump, the US president, has expressed frustration over the progress of talks. On Friday, he wrote: "Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war."

It comes as Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg denied suggesting the country could be partitioned.

The Times earlier reported that, during an interview with the paper, Kellogg had proposed British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of Ukraine as part of a "reassurance force".

Russia's army, he reportedly suggested, could then remain in the occupied east. "You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two," the paper quoted him as saying.

Kellogg later took to social media to say that the article had "misrepresented" what he said.

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