Trump says Ukraine deal close after envoy Witkoff meets Putin

By Mark Trevelyan and Steve Holland

MOSCOW/LONDON/ROME (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin for three hours in Moscow on Friday to discuss the U.S. plan to end the war in Ukraine, and Trump said the two sides were "very close to a deal," despite apparent differences in their positions.

Trump said in a social media post after Witkoff's meeting concluded that it was a good day of talks and called for a high-level meeting between Kyiv and Moscow to close a deal.

"Most of the major points are agreed to," Trump said in the post after landing in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday. "Stop the bloodshed, NOW."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was also expected to attend the funeral, although he said on Friday he was not certain he could make it.

Russia and Ukraine have not held direct talks since the early weeks of the war, which started with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, who took part in Friday's meeting and brief reporters on the details, earlier described it as constructive and very useful.

"This conversation allowed Russia and the United States to further bring their positions closer together, not only on Ukraine but also on a number of other international issues," he told reporters.

"As for the Ukrainian crisis itself, the discussion focused in particular on the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between representatives of the Russian Federation and Ukraine."

There was no immediate comment from Witkoff.

A real estate billionaire, Witkoff has emerged as Washington's key interlocutor with Putin as Trump pushes for a deal to end the war.

His latest trip follows talks this week at which Ukrainian and European officials pushed back against some of the U.S. proposals for how to settle the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.

Witkoff's meeting took place just hours after a car bomb killed a senior Russian military officer near Moscow, which the Kremlin blamed on Kyiv.

On Thursday, Trump criticised a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv that killed at least 12 people, and posted a message to Putin on social media that read: "Vladimir, STOP!"

Trump has warned both sides that the U.S. will abandon its effort unless there is genuine progress.

NEWCOMER TO DIPLOMACY

Witkoff had no diplomatic experience before joining Trump's team in January and critics have portrayed him as out of his depth when pitched into a head-to-head negotiation with Putin, Russia's paramount leader for the past 25 years.

Video of the start of Friday's meeting showed the American, accompanied only by a translator, seated opposite Putin, Kremlin aide Ushakov and Russian investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev, also with an interpreter.

Critics have at times accused Witkoff of echoing the Kremlin's narrative. In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson last month, for example, Witkoff said there was no reason why Russia would want to absorb Ukraine or bite off more of its territory, and it was "preposterous" to think that Putin would want to send his army marching across Europe.

Ukraine and many of its European allies say the opposite. Putin denies any designs on NATO territory, and Moscow has repeatedly cast such charges as evidence of European hostility and "Russophobia".

According to texts seen by Reuters, the peace proposal Witkoff has presented calls for formal U.S. recognition of Russia's control over Crimea - the Ukrainian peninsula Moscow seized and annexed in 2014 - plus de facto recognition of Russia's hold on areas of southern and eastern Ukraine that its forces control.

A European and Ukrainian document defers detailed discussion about territory until after a ceasefire is concluded, with no mention of recognising Russian control over any Ukrainian territory.

There are also differences over the lifting of sanctions on Russia, the shape of security guarantees for Ukraine and the future size of the Ukrainian military.

Zelenskiy said this week that recognising Crimea as part of Russia would violate Ukraine's constitution.

Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published on Friday: "Crimea will stay with Russia. And Zelenskiy understands that, and everybody understands that it's been with them for a long time."

(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow, Maxim Rodionov and Darya Korsunskaya in London, Steve Holland aboard Air Force One, and Gram Slattery, Doina Chiacu, Trevor Hunnicutt and Simon Lewis in WashingtonWriting by Mark Trevelyan and Simon LewisEditing by Kevin Liffey, Frances Kerry, Nia Williams and Cynthia Osterman)