US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff arrived Wednesday in St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at resolving the war in Ukraine, two sources with the visit told Reuters. The trip came a day after Witkoff met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo, Norway.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Oslo meeting positive, saying nothing surprising came out of it. \u201cHe will now, armed with those ideas, be able to go to St. Petersburg and share them with the Russian side, and let\u2019s see if we can make some progress,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said Ukraine would be the main focus of the talks. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether any agreement will be reached today, but the talks on the conflict in Ukraine are, of course, the main focus of today\u2019s discussions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A US official described the Oslo talks as \u201cconstructive,\u201d saying Ukraine brought new ideas and proposals and that participants made \u201cmeaningful progress\u201d toward a coordinated approach to engaging Russia. The talks, which also involved the leaders of Norway and Finland along with European and NATO representatives, covered security guarantees for Ukraine, a post-war economic plan and a broader European security architecture. <\/p>\n
Following the meeting, Zelensky told reporters that Ukraine was again receiving early warnings of Russian missile attacks. \u201cNow it works, it\u2019s great,\u201d he said, adding that he discussed Patriot interceptor supplies, Starlink and \u201cArticle 5-like\u201d security guarantees with Rubio.<\/p>\n
The secretary of state said Washington had not pulled back Ukraine\u2019s Starlink access. \u201cWhat I can tell you with certainty is the president of the United States, nor anyone in our system, ever requested that any changes to that system be made,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk has said the US government controls the military version of the system and that any limits are ultimately up to President Donald Trump. A source said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had not approved Ukraine\u2019s latest requests for Patriot interceptors.<\/p>\n
Trump stated Tuesday that Ukraine must want to end the war. \u201cUkraine has to want to settle this war,\u201d he told reporters, and said Moscow wanted to get it done. Ties deteriorated after Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel 10 days ago and later issued a broad waiver of tougher sanctions that were due to begin this week.<\/p>\n
Russia continued attacking Ukraine. Its defense ministry said it struck three cargo vessels in the port of Reni and two en route to Odesa. Energy facilities were hit in seven regions, and a Russian drone struck an energy facility in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.<\/p>\n
Lavrov arrives in Tehran: Visit follows Gulf appeal for Russia to press Iran<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff arrived Wednesday in St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-433821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}