Witkoff will discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine as Trump says again that he wants a ‘deal where people stop getting killed’.
United States President Donald Trump said his special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit Russia next week to continue talks on the war in Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said Witkoff would visit, “I think next week, Wednesday or Thursday.”
Responding to questions from reporters on what Russia could do to avoid looming sanctions, the US president replied: “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.”
Trump has threatened to impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire deal with Ukraine soon.
Trump also said that two nuclear submarines he deployed following an online row with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev were now “in the region.”
Trump has not said whether he meant nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines. He also did not elaborate on the exact deployment locations, which are kept secret by the US military.
Trump’s latest comments come after he recently described Russia’s actions in its war on Ukraine as “disgusting“, after a Russian attack on an apartment block in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, killed 31 people on Thursday.
The attack capped off a month of a record 6,297 Russian long-range drone attacks on Ukraine, a 14-fold increase from July 2024.
Ukraine is looking forward to receiving a US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which Trump has promised will be delivered, albeit with funding from Ukraine’s European allies, not the Trump administration.
Ukraine has also continued to launch its own attacks on Russia, with its most recent attacks on Sunday killing three people across the country and causing a major fire at an oil refinery.
A Ukrainian drone attack on Monday morning sparked a fire at a railway station in Russia’s Volgograd region, the regional administration said on Telegram.
As fighting has continued, Russian and Ukrainian officials have held several meetings in recent months in Istanbul, Turkiye.
The latest meeting secured an agreement to exchange 1,200 prisoners, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday.
Russia has yet to comment.
Witkoff, a real estate magnate and Trump golf partner, has already met with Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times in Moscow in his role as a White House special envoy.
As a special envoy to the Middle East, he is also Trump’s representative in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which saw him visit Tel Aviv, Israel, on Saturday, where he met with the families of captives held in Gaza.
