Washington — President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff are meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, a White House source confirmed, as Mr. Trump presses for an end to the fighting in Ukraine.
The meeting comes after U.S. and Ukrainian officials held talks in Florida over the weekend. Witkoff has met with Putin before, as he has turned his focus toward Ukraine after he and Kushner helped broker the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Mr. Trump told reporters after Sunday’s talks, “I think that there’s a good chance we can make a deal.”
The U.S. backed a peace proposal to end Russia’s war on Ukraine last month, although much more work remains to be done. Putin has called U.S. proposals a “set of issues put forward for discussion” rather than a draft agreement. Last week, Mr. Trump said there were “only a few remaining points of disagreement,” after a U.S. official and Ukraine’s national security adviser Rustem Umerov said a common understanding on a proposal had been reached, with details still to be worked out.
Mr. Trump told reporters over the weekend that the U.S.-backed plan, which was originally 28 points, has evolved, after some alleged it was heavily slanted toward Russia’s priorities, with one provision calling for Ukraine to cede territory it currently controls to Russia.
“They’re making concessions,” Mr. Trump told reporters of the Russians. “They’re big concessions. They stop fighting, and they don’t take any more land.”
Those two things aren’t going to be seen as concessions to European leaders, who believe Russia should give back Ukrainian territory it has occupied. Ukraine has also pushed for security guarantees as part of any deal to end the war, though Russia has rejected the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, which would obligate the U.S. and other member states to come to its defense.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Florida for the talks with the Ukrainians over the weekend, called the conversations with the Ukrainians “another very productive session” but “there are a lot of moving parts.”
“We don’t just want to end the war. We also want to help Ukraine be safe forever,” he said. “So never again will they face another invasion. And equally importantly, we want them to enter an age of true prosperity. It’s about also the terms that set up Ukraine for long-term prosperity.”
On Sunday, Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio voiced concerns that the White House approach could be too pro-Russia.
Asked by CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes whether he still has concerns about the plan being too pro-Russia, Turner, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and formerly chaired the House Intelligence Committee, said “I think we all have those concerns.” But he added, “one thing that I think everybody understands is that you can’t have, you can’t be America First and pro-Russia, because Russia is a self-declared adversary of the United States.”
Peace is far from a reality on the ground in Ukraine, as Russian missiles rained down again on Kyiv over the weekend, CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams reports from western Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has offered high praise for Witkoff’s negotiating skills and personable nature, and given him an increasingly large portfolio. The White House did not dispute a phone transcript published by Bloomberg last week in which Witkoff reportedly advised Yuri Ushakov, a top Putin official, on how Putin should approach Mr. Trump in peace negotiations.
“This story proves one thing: Special Envoy Witkoff talks to officials in both Russia and Ukraine nearly every day to achieve peace, which is exactly what President Trump appointed him to do,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in response to the transcript Bloomberg published.