Putin Ready to Resume Trilateral Talks After 10 November
President Putin told the American envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg that he would be ready to resume trilateral talks on Ukraine after 10 November, according to his aide Yury Ushakov. Mr Witkoff, thanking Mr Putin for freeing Stephen Hubbard, told him: “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.”
Mr Ushakov said the Kremlin wants to discuss a “security framework” for both Russia and Ukraine once the fighting ends, without saying what Moscow would demand. Kremlin officials, quoted by TASS, said progress was “theoretically possible” but required Kyiv to make “necessary decisions”; Dmitry Peskov said the talks would take a long time. Mr Zelensky has insisted that any settlement is acceptable “only when we are at the table of negotiations”. The gap between a Russian “framework” and Ukrainian guarantees is where the next round will be won or lost.