By Gleb Bryanski and Anton Kolodyazhnyy<\/p>\n
MOSCOW, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin met U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for around three hours in the Kremlin on Saturday, telling them at the start of the talks that the situation in Ukraine was “difficult.”<\/p>\n
Putin \u200cpraised U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the 4-1\/2-year war in Ukraine. Trump suggested on Friday the U.S. had a fresh proposal aimed \u200cat ending the war. He did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
“Understanding that he is entering a difficult situation, he nevertheless does not stop his efforts to help bring about a settlement and to make his contribution \u200bto resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict,” Putin said.<\/p>\n
Russian state media said the talks lasted about three hours, and published video of the American motorcade leaving the Kremlin. There was no immediate comment from either side.<\/p>\n
As in previous meetings, Putin was flanked by his foreign-policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, and his investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who met the two visitors at the airport, took them to a restaurant, and then accompanied them to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a statement posted on the Kremlin’s channel \u200cin Max messenger that Putin had ordered the military \u2060not to strike Kyiv for three days, starting at midnight on Saturday, as Witkoff and Kushner will head next to the Ukrainian capital.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had spoken to the two U.S. envoys set to visit Ukraine on Sunday, adding \u2060that Ukraine was prepared to refrain from strikes on Moscow through Monday.<\/p>\n
Putin noted in his opening remarks that the intensity of Ukrainian attacks on Russia had also decreased and promised to ensure the safety of the U.S. negotiators. He said Russia had not yet agreed to a broader three-day ceasefire.<\/p>\n
A VAST GULF IN POSITIONS<\/p>\n
The Russian Defence Ministry reported 53 \u200bUkrainian \u200bdrones in Russian airspace on Saturday, significantly fewer than the average seen in recent months. \u200bMoscow is celebrating City Day on Saturday, with hundreds of \u200cthousands of people taking part in open-air festivities across the city.<\/p>\n
A vast gulf remains between Russia and Ukraine on how to end the war, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.<\/p>\n
A source close to the Kremlin, speaking before reports emerged of a possible trip by Trump’s envoys, said Putin was still intent on capturing more territory.<\/p>\n
“There is no chance of reaching an agreement regarding the front line until Putin finishes securing the remaining part of the Donetsk region,” the source told Reuters, adding that the Kremlin leader was confident \u2014 based on reports from his commanders \u2014 that this would happen by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
KREMLIN’S POSITION ‘UNSHAKEABLE’<\/p>\n
Western military \u200canalysts see such a possibility as remote, given Moscow’s slow rate of progress. Ukraine has \u200brefused to surrender land it has successfully defended at huge cost, and rejects such terms as \u200btantamount to surrender.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin said on Friday the position that Putin \u200bset out in a speech two years ago \u2014 that Ukraine should cede the entire territory of four regions claimed by Russia \u200cand abandon its plan to join NATO \u2014 was “unshakeable.”<\/p>\n
Since the last peace \u200btalks in February, each side has intensified \u200blong-range air attacks deep inside the other’s territory, while the war at sea has also escalated.<\/p>\n
On the ground, the front lines have remained largely static, with Russia making only gradual gains in its attempt to take the whole of Ukraine’s Donbas region.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian oil refineries \u200bhave led to a summer of fuel shortages and rising \u200cprices for Russian motorists, while some 30 attacks on giant warehouses belonging mostly to Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer, have affected \u200bthe consumer economy.<\/p>\n
(Additional reporting by Marina Bobrova, Dmitry Antonov and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow, Darya Korsunskaya and Mark Trevelyan in London, Olena Harmash \u200bin Kyiv; Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Toby Chopra, Rod Nickel and Andrea Ricci)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gleb Bryanski and Anton Kolodyazhnyy MOSCOW, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin met U.S. envoys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13175,13174,1664,64,414,3773,509,1283,1665,3329,26,37,33],"class_list":["post-37901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-anton-kolodyazhnyy","tag-gleb-bryanski","tag-jared-kushner","tag-kremlin","tag-putin","tag-reuters","tag-russian","tag-saturday","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-u-s","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}