US President Donald Trump's special envoy said Monday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was open to a "permanent peace" deal with Ukraine, following talks seeking to end the more than three-year war.
Trump has been pressing Moscow and Kyiv to agree to a ceasefire but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations between Russian and US officials.
On Friday, Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in Saint Petersburg -- their third meeting third since the Republican leader returned to the White House in January.
Witkoff said during a Fox News interview televised Monday that he sees a peace deal "emerging," and that two key Putin advisers -- Yuri Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev -- were in the "compelling meeting."
"Putin's request is to get to have a permanent peace here. So beyond the ceasefire, we got an answer to that," Witkoff said, acknowledging that "it took a while for us to get to this place."
"I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large."
He added that business deals between Russia and the United States were also part of the negotiations.
"I believe there's a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities, that I think give real stability to the region too," he said.
Despite a flurry of diplomacy, there has been little meaningful progress on Trump's main aim of achieving a Ukraine ceasefire.
Putin last month rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a full and unconditional pause in the conflict, while the Kremlin has made a truce in the Black Sea conditional on the West lifting certain sanctions.
With AFP
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