U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, accompanied by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday as the White House continues its push to keep negotiations alive. The visit follows a new round of talks held Sunday in Florida between U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, during which the two sides again failed to reach consensus on key issues.
Witkoff is expected to brief Putin on the outcome of those discussions and present the current version of Trump’s peace proposal, which was reduced from 28 points to 19 last week. Despite frequent travel to Moscow—this marks his sixth meeting with Putin this year—Witkoff has yet to secure any breakthrough that both sides can accept.
U.S. media outlets have already cast doubt on the likelihood of progress, noting that several changes incorporated into the revised proposal are ones Moscow is almost certain to reject. These include Ukrainian territorial concessions and assurances that Kiev would abandon efforts to join NATO.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the U.S. team in the Florida talks, described the meeting as “difficult yet productive,” while both sides used diplomatic terms like “frank,” typically signaling challenging negotiations. According to reports, the Ukrainian delegation, led by National Security and Defence Council head Rustem Umerov, firmly rejected giving up territory or reinstating a constitutional ban on pursuing NATO membership—positions Ukraine held until 2014.
The lack of movement from Kiev is expected to significantly diminish the chances that Putin will accept any proposal presented on Tuesday. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that if Witkoff arrived with any proposal that deviated from what Putin and Trump had agreed to during their August meeting in Alaska, the Kremlin would reject it outright. Putin himself stated recently that Russia had already made all the concessions it was willing to make.
Trump’s renewed focus on negotiations began last month after White House officials said he came to accept that Ukraine was likely to lose the war—a conclusion he reportedly did not reach until the fall of the strategic city of Pokrovsk.