President Donald Trump's foreign envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
Witkoff landed in Moscow on Wednesday morning and was greeted by Russia's investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Reuters reported. A video released by the Kremlin later showed him that he shook hands with Putin before the meeting.
Whether Putin can convince Vitkov (and Trump) that his interest in ending Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine is an open question. Trump expressed doubts about Putin's willingness to stop fighting and seemed wary of his now openly distrustful leader.
Meanwhile, Putin maintained his greatest ambitions for the conflict, including capturing the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhiya and Hesen, and insisted that Ukraine had limited the size of its military.
Trump said he will wait until the talks end a day before the Vidokoff meeting to decide whether to impose new sanctions.
“We're going to see what happens,” he said at the White House. “We're going to make a decision at that time.”
Russian state media Tass said that when the reporter arrived in Russia, Vidoc did not share his expectations before the negotiations.
The environment in Moscow will be very different from that when Witkoff sat down with Putin in April. Russia has rejected U.S.-led efforts to build peace in Ukraine since its April meeting, exacerbating the impact of missiles and drones against Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kiev.
According to people familiar with the conversation, Trump spoke over the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about potential sanctions against Moscow. Zelensky said in his reading of the meeting posted on social media that these sanctions could “change a lot.”
Zelensky also said they discussed the increase in U.S. weapons support paid by NATO allies last month, a policy made by Trump last month.
The U.S. president has grown increasingly impatient with Russia's boycott of peace efforts, calling the air strikes “disgusting” and accusing Putin of touting the “bull market*t” in their nervous telephone conversations.
He set a Friday deadline for Russia to either agree to a peace agreement or suffer new sanctions, including buyers of its own economic and energy products. Trump cut off his initial 50-day schedule after seeing Russia barely move. However, since the discovery of Moscow, Moscow has found more and more Western measures since the beginning of the war, and he also suspects that any new sanctions will prove effective.
“There will be sanctions, but they seem to be very good at avoiding sanctions,” Trump said Sunday. “You know, they are sly characters, they are very good at avoiding sanctions. So we're going to see what happens.”
Trump also announced late last week that he ordered the repositioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines to “prepare” – a response to inflammatory remarks by former Russian president and its vice-president of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev.
But even Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that after these comments said Medvedev was not a relevant player, he explained that his remarks were unlikely to be a factor in one way or another.
Two sources told CNN that some European officials believe the Trump announcement may be a goal to highlight U.S. nuclear capabilities efforts. It is not clear whether the United States has actually relocated any of its nuclear submarines.
Trump threatens to take two different types of measures before Moscow has reached its peace deadline. He said he would impose new sanctions on the United States on Russian import measures, which would have the least impact given that trade between the two countries was nearly stagnant since the war began.
Trump also promised “secondary tariffs” on countries that import Russian energy, including China and India as the country's largest energy customers. This has the potential to help cut funding for the Russian war machine.
“Is August 8 an actual deadline for Trump or part of Trump, usually involving creating leverage points and then determining how to use them?” said a U.S. official. “Until Trump decided it was based on many unidentified variables, it wasn’t true.”
U.S. officials said there have been active efforts to formulate those possible secondary sanctions in recent weeks, adding that they believe Trump’s frustration with Putin is so strong that he may shed light on the measures in a green way. Sources said Trump is likely to back down if Russia makes a substantial offer.
“These are intuitions about him,” said a source near the White House. “It depends on how he sells it to the base.”
The United States and its Western allies have taken many steps to try to stifle Moscow's energy revenue, including applying price caps on Russian crude oil. But so far, this has not led to Putin's change of course. Russia was able to evade certain measures of its energy products by using a “shadow fleet” that hides ownership to sell to China and India.
Trump said things could change if Russian oil prices fell sharply.
“If you lower your energy by another $10 a barrel, Putin will stop killing people. He has no choice because his economy is notorious,” the president said in a telephone interview on CNBC on Tuesday.
Russia's economy has recently shown signs of weakness, including rampant inflation and higher food costs, as the weight of the three and a half years of war begins to have more impacts.
Trump has said he will simultaneously work to withdraw concessions from New Delhi to impose a large amount of tariffs on India.
“They are cheering for the war machine and if they are going to do that, I won't be happy,” Trump told CNBC.
India believes its Russian energy purchases stabilize the global oil market.
It is unclear how Trump takes new measures in China to take new measures for his Russian energy purchases. He is still seeking a comprehensive trade deal with Beijing, with U.S. officials describing significant progress in recent negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Nevertheless, Finance Minister Scott Bessent told his Chinese counterparts directly during trade talks in Stockholm last month that they should be prepared for sanctions if they continue to buy Russian oil.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have also deepened their relationship in recent years, and China's support for Russian war efforts is far beyond energy purchases. China provides Russia with components of weapons and drones used to attack Ukraine.
Putin and the Eleventh are expected to meet in Beijing at a commemoration ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in early September.
In recent months, Witkov has played a less active role in Ukrainian war negotiations as Russia refuses to take substantial measures to end the conflict.
During this period, Trump and special envoy Keith Kellogg from Ukraine and Russia maintained regular communication with the Ukrainians, who visited Keith last month.
Trump also began to change his tone to Ukraine, saying it needed to defend his abilities.
But with Witkoff's revisiting Russia in several months, his role has attracted people to re-spotlight. Earlier this year, the lack of diplomatic experience of real estate developers by U.S. officials and Russian experts raised concerns, especially after many early meetings with Putin, where there was no American translator.
After his last meeting with Putin, Vedov predicted that the Russian leader would be “the first time in decades to see an opportunity” to recalibrate U.S.-Russia relations – although the war was ongoing months later and U.S.-Russia relations did not improve.
Nevertheless, even with talks with Russia, Witkoff has been involved in the Gaza and Iran talks in recent months and has played an active role in Trump's inner circle.