Witkoff Asks Putin To Restart Ukraine Peace Talks

Russia freed 74-year-old American teacher Stephen Hubbard as the US envoy pressed Putin on trilateral talks — then called him a “humanitarian.”

The diplomacy is now running on two separate tracks that rarely meet. On one, Witkoff carries documents, briefs a hostage release and asks for a next step. On the other, a diesel tanker sails toward a US port, a satellite service slows, and fuel prices shape a governing party’s election math. Moscow’s offer is telling: it proposes to help Washington with Iran and to feed American farmers, bargains that reward the relationship rather than resolve the war. A freed prisoner is genuine and worth having. But Putin’s stated aims — Donetsk, and no NATO — remain unaltered, and the release of one American is not a concession on territory. The hostage ledger and the war ledger are not the same account.

Speaking in the Constantine Palace, the imperial residence where he received the envoy, Putin met Steve Witkoff for a ninth time in person, with Russia’s special investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev also present. The meeting began with a goodwill gesture: the release of Stephen James Hubbard, a retired American schoolteacher imprisoned for over four years on mercenary charges Washington has called fabricated, a release President Trump announced on social media.

Witkoff said he had brought documents setting out ideas for a potential peace deal and asked Putin to consider reopening trilateral talks between the United States, Ukraine and Russia — last held in February, before the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. He described Tuesday’s Oslo talks with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European and NATO leaders as productive and marked by “some degree of momentum.” Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, was expected to join by phone to convey his own ideas. A US official said the Oslo meeting had covered security guarantees, a post-war economic plan and European security architecture, and had made “meaningful progress.”

Putin, who has barely moved on his core war aims — full control of Donetsk and no Ukrainian NATO membership — offered to leverage Moscow’s decades-old relationship with Tehran to address US nuclear concerns, and floated supplying fertiliser to American farmers. He also raised a possible meeting with Trump in China next month that could include Xi Jinping.

The friction is visible. US-Ukraine ties have frayed since the diesel export deal with Russia, with Kyiv reporting disrupted intelligence sharing and access to the Starshield military satellite system; the Wall Street Journal reported, and Reuters could not verify, that Elon Musk ordered a slowdown of a military-grade Starlink service Ukraine uses to track ballistic missile strikes. Mr Musk says such decisions rest with the US military or the president, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington had not withdrawn Kyiv’s access. More than two years after Mr Trump promised to end the war within 24 hours, he told Ukraine on Tuesday it was time to strike a deal or face “a very bad thing.”