US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Moscow, two days before Trump’s promised additional sanctions are to be implemented, BBC reports.
The US president threatened in late July to impose new sanctions on Russia, and also to impose sanctions on countries that trade with Moscow, if Putin does not take the necessary steps to end the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia will only seriously look towards peace when it starts to run out of money. Zelensky has supported the decision on tougher sanctions against countries that buy Russian oil.
Photos published by Russian media show politicians shaking hands and smiling. There is little hope that the peace talks will reach any conclusion by Friday, the 8th of August, and Russia has continued its heavy attacks on Ukraine despite Trump’s threats to tighten sanctions.
In January, before taking office, Trump claimed that he could end the war in Ukraine in a day.
That has not worked, and the US president is growing increasingly frustrated, also sending harsh words towards Moscow. In July, Trump said that he had thought many times that everything was settled, and then Putin took over and started shelling cities and killing people even in nursing homes.
Three rounds of talks in Istanbul have failed. Moscow’s conditions for ending the war are unacceptable to either Kiev or the West. The Kremlin has also repeatedly rejected proposals to arrange a meeting between Zelensky and Putin. Meanwhile, the US government has approved a 200 million dollar arms sale to Ukraine. In a phone call on the 5th of August, Trump and Zelensky also discussed cooperation in the field of defense and the production of drones.
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