President Donald Trump’s envoy traveled to Moscow on Friday to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The talks followed a car bombing outside the city.
The Russian news agency TASS reports that Witkoff and Putin spoke for three hours. Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, described the talks as positive. “President Putin’s meeting with Steven Witkoff in Moscow. We are making progress,” he said.
Witkoff has met with Putin four times during Trump’s first three months in office. Trump made ending the war in Ukraine one of his top priorities on the campaign trail.
According to CNN, the President has privately expressed that ending the war in Ukraine is more difficult than he anticipated. Trump has criticized both Ukrainian President Zelensky and Putin publicly in recent days.
Zelensky rebuffed Trump’s proposal that Kiev make territorial concessions to end the war. The President responded by lashing out at the Ukrainian leader.
Trump is also facing pushback from America’s European allies. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are pressing Trump not to force Ukraine to sign a deal with Russia.
An additional challenge to Trump’s goal of ending the war is the ongoing fighting. In a post on Truth Social, Trump responded to a Russian missile strike in Ukraine by posting, “Vladimir, STOP!” He added the attack was “very bad timing.”
Shortly before the talks between Putin and Witkoff kicked off, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in Balashikha, a city near Moscow. Ukraine has conducted several similar bombings in Russia throughout the war.
Still, in a statement to the press as the talks between Witkoff and Putin were ongoing, Trump expressed to reporters believed a deal was close. “They’re meeting with Putin right now as we speak. And we have a lot of things going on. And I think, in the end, we’re going to end up with a lot good deals, including tariff deals and trade deals.”
“We’re going make our country rich, but we’re gonna try and get out of war so that we can save 5,000 people a week.” The President added, “And that’s what my aim is. I want to save 5,000 young men. They happen to be mostly Ukrainian, Russian. 5,000 young Ukrainian and Russian men and that’s that’s a big honor if I could do it.”
Recently, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have argued that a deal must happen quickly, and the White House was prepared to move on from ending the war if no agreement appeared possible.
Trump appeared to walk that back in his remarks to the press, stressing there was no deadline. “I think I think we’re pretty close. [There is] no deadline, I just want to do it as fast as possible,” he said.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.
