US and Ukrainian negotiators met in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for a second round of negotiations aimed at the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Kyiv’s confidence in Washington was again tested by the Trump administration.
Steve Witkoff, US President’s special envoy for Russia, echoed at the Kremlin long points and lies about Ukraine and said he “liked” Russian President Vladimir Putin and considered him “super smart” after meeting him in Moscow this month.
“I don’t consider Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said in a podcast with right media personality Tucker Carlson, broadcast Friday night. Witkoff fakely described Russian occupied territories in Ukraine as wanting to join Russia and rejected European post -war security efforts as “an attitude and a position”.
Witkoff said Washington’s goal in peace talks was to provide a “30-day ceasefire, during which time we discuss a permanent ceasefire”. But Kyiv has already accused Moscow of violating her commitment to stop attacks on energy infrastructure.
The Kremlin did not immediately comment on the Witkoff interview, but the pro-government voices welcomed it.
Margarita Simonyan, editor -in -chief of Russian propaganda broadcaster RT, wrote in the telegram that “The main message from Trump’s Ukrainian policy” was recognizing Russia’s territorial claims.
Sunday’s discussions with Ukraine officials, followed by US-Russian talks on Monday, are being described as “technical” than at high level.
Speaking to CBS on Sunday, Mike Waltz, the US National Security Adviser, described negotiations over the next two days as “proximity talks” that would focus on a “maritime ceasefire so that both sides could move grain, fuel and start trading in the Black Sea”.
The talks would pass through the “control line”, including details of peacekeeping and verification mechanisms to freeze the front line, he said. Future talks would focus on the exchange of “territory for permanent peace” and “what tends to speak Ukrainians – as security guarantees”.
Ukrainian officials said they would focus on the modalities of a potential ceasefire – including how it can be monitored and implemented – as well as energy and maritime energy -related issues.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umarov will lead the delegation of his country, which includes Pavlo Palisa, a military presidential adviser, Foreign Policy Advisor Ihor Zhovkva, and some military officers, according to the presidential office.
The US delegation will be led by Andrew Peek, the National Security Council and Michael Anton, the head of state policy planning, the US official said.
Sunday talks attend a meeting in Jeddah on March 11, after which Ukraine said he was ready to accept a US proposal for a 30-day immediate ceasefire.
In response, Washington said he would resume shipments of weapons and ammunition to Kyiv and end his suspension of intelligence sharing that had been cut off behind Trump’s dust with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House last month-a Ukrainian step-watched Operating Operations to Keep Operations Beyond Line.
The US proposal was announced in a joint statement after several hours of discussion. But that plan was not supported by Putin, who told Trump in a call on Tuesday that he was only prepared to refrain from hitting Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days.
Ukrainian officials say Russia has not lived until the promise, as its air strikes have continued every day since the leaders’ call. Attacks – which Zelenskyy said on Sunday morning included 1,100 drone, 1,580 directed air bombs and 15 different missiles – have targeted civil infrastructure in cities throughout Ukraine.
Swarms of Russian drones attacked the Ukraine capital on Saturday night, killing at least three people and lighting fires in several apartment blocks.
Odesa on Friday was also targeted by one of the biggest attacks of Russian war drone, with regional officials saying the attacks had led to urgent power cuts.
President Czecheke Petr Pavel, who had been visiting Odessa and boarded a train in Kyiv just 20 minutes before the drone attack, said the strikes underlined the challenge of negotiations with Russia.
“Someone must be really cynical when it declares the willingness to have peace negotiations or ceasefire negotiations, and at the same time to start a mass attack on civil infrastructure,” he told reporters. “Extremely is extremely difficult to deal with such a party.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt peace negotiations by hitting an oil depot in the Krasnodar region and a gas measuring station in Sudzha, a city in the Russian Kursk region, recently taken by Russian forces. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the Sudzha attack.
“These actions show a full willingness to reach an agreement and no desire for peace,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.
Moscow also portrays Monday’s talks with SH.BA as a low -level technical meeting to discuss the safe pass for ships in the Black Sea.
Her delegation will include Grigory Karasi, a career diplomat and chairman of the international Affraires Committee in the Upper House of Parliament, and Sergei Besedea, a adviser to the head of the Spioune FSB agency.
Witkoff was also despised by Sir Keir Starmer, prime minister in the UK, to gather a “ready coalition” to help defend any peace in Ukraine, saying the idea was “an attitude and a position”.
Witkoff told Carlson that Starmer and other European leaders thought “we should all be like Winston Churchill”.
Starmer last week received military planning from more than 30 seats near London for talks in a multinational attempt to defend any ceasefire. Britain and France would direct any such force.
Downing Street refused to comment, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she was not “rested” from Witkoff’s remarks.
“We have to make sure that if there is a truce, it can be protected,” she told the BBC. “Of course SH.BA should be an important part of that.”
Additional reporting by George Parker in London
