Stand: 21 October, 7 pm Berlin time. After a roughly three-hour meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg, Russia says it is ready to resume three-way talks with the United States and Ukraine. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian media Moscow is “in principle” ready to continue, with the main topic being a security arrangement for Russia and Ukraine once the fighting stops.
No date is fixed, and reports differ. dpa and Axios say after or around 10 November; Russian media quoted by CBS and UNN speak of early November; the Kyiv Post says mid-November. Ushakov named Abu Dhabi as a possible venue, where two earlier rounds took place. The last three-way round was in Geneva in February.
Washington’s confirmation is anonymous. A US official told Axios that Witkoff and Jared Kushner proposed a technical-level meeting: “This was accepted by the Ukrainians in Oslo yesterday and by the Russians in St. Petersburg today.” Kyiv had not confirmed this on the record by the evening. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that the next step should be a meeting of himself, Putin and Trump – a format Moscow has so far rejected.
Moscow’s tone stays hard. Ushakov said the proposals from Europeans and Kyiv in Oslo contained little that was useful. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin would study the US papers but that talks would take a long time. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ruled out political concessions, according to the Kyiv Post. Russia still demands Ukraine withdraw from Donbas as a condition for a ceasefire; Kyiv refuses.
Other threads moved too. Putin announced the release of US citizen Stephen Hubbard, which Trump says required no swap. Moscow is also courting the US with economic offers, including fertiliser and diesel, and, per dpa, wants a Trump–Xi–Putin meeting on the margins of the APEC summit in November.
Our assessment, with caveats: the signal is real but small. A working-level meeting is not a ceasefire, and it lets Moscow look willing without conceding anything – which can also ease pressure in Washington for new sanctions. For Kyiv, the value lies in keeping the US inside the process. Two paths look realistic: a technical meeting in November with thin results, or a fresh refusal if the dispute over strikes on energy infrastructure escalates. We think the first is more likely, though we cannot be sure.
Earlier coverage: Witkoff meets Putin in St Petersburg for Ukraine talks.
