Trump Envoy Steve Witkoff Holds 3-Hour Meeting With Putin As Peace Deadline Nears

President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for three hours on Wednesday, just two days before Trump’s deadline for Russia to agree to peace with Ukraine.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the meeting was “highly productive,” adding that “great progress was made!”

“Afterwards, I updated some of our European Allies. Everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump wrote.

The Kremlin said the meeting resulted in “a very useful and constructive conversation,” ABC News reported. The discussion focused on the war in Ukraine, along with potential “strategic cooperation between the United States and Russia,” according to Putin aide, Yuri Ushakov. Witkoff also met with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Ushakov said that the Kremlin would wait until Witkoff reports to Trump to comment further on the meeting. As of Wednesday afternoon, the White House has not provided any details on Witkoff’s talks with Putin.

The meeting marked Witkoff’s fifth visit with Putin since Trump was sworn into office for his second term and vowed to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. So far, none of Witkoff’s meetings with the Russian authoritarian have resulted in any action toward peace between Moscow and Kyiv. The only deals Russia and Ukraine have agreed to are prisoner swaps and a Black Sea ceasefire that both nations accused each other of breaking.

Last week, Trump increased pressure on Putin to reach a peace deal, giving Russia until Friday — a much shorter timeframe than the 50-day deadline he initially gave Putin last month. Trump also said Friday that he repositioned two nuclear submarines in response to former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev saying that Trump’s ultimatums to Russia were “a step towards war.”

“Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances,” Trump said after announcing that he was moving the nuclear subs. He added that Medvedev should “watch his words” and that he was “entering very dangerous territory!”

Russia responded after Trump’s move, saying that the Kremlin “is very cautious about nuclear nonproliferation matters, and we believe everyone should be very careful about nuclear rhetoric.”

“There can be no winner in a nuclear war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added. “This is probably the key premise we rely on. We do not think there is talk of any escalation.”

As Russian airstrikes on Ukraine have increased in recent weeks, Trump has threatened to punish Russia with secondary tariffs if it does not end the fighting by his Friday deadline. The secondary tariffs would be imposed on countries that do business with Russia, such as buying Russian oil, a move that the Trump administration hopes would cut deeply into Moscow’s war chest. Russia’s biggest oil customers are India and China.

This article has been updated to include a post from President Trump.