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Steve Witkoff was reported to have flown out of Moscow on Tuesday night after Kremlin aides said no progress was made towards ending the Ukraine war. It came after two weeks of diplomatic chaos and haggling beginning with the Russian leaking of a 28-point wishlist that Moscow had discussed with the US, followed by frenzied efforts involving Ukraine and Europe to produce a counter-proposal more acceptable to Kyiv.
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Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that after their five-hour meeting the two sides were “neither further nor closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine. There is a lot of work to be done.” On Tuesday, a video feed showed Vladimir Putin asking Witkoff, Donald Trump’s envoy, about a short tour of Moscow he had taken before the meeting, with Witkoff calling it a “magnificent city”. The feed then cut out.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that he was worried the US could lose interest in the Ukrainian peace process. “If somebody from our allies is tired, I’m afraid,” Zelenskyy told an event in Dublin. “It’s the goal of Russia to withdraw the interest of America from this situation.” The Ukrainian president said he was “awaiting signals” from the US delegation after its meeting with Putin and was “ready for a meeting with President Trump. Everything depends on today’s discussions.” US reports suggested Witkoff might meet Zelenskyy after departing Moscow.
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Vladimir Putin used Tuesday’s talks to threaten that Russia was ready for war with Europe. “Europe is preventing the US administration from achieving peace on Ukraine,” Putin claimed without evidence in remarks to Russian state media, adding: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.” Putin did not clarify which European demands he found unacceptable. “They are on the side of war,” Putin said of European powers.
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Ukrainian authorities have arrested a British military instructor accused of spying for Russia and plotting assassinations, writes Serena Richards. Ross David Cutmore, 40, from Dunfermline, was allegedly recruited by Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, to “carry out targeted killings on the territory of Ukraine” between 2024 and 2025. A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: “We are providing consular assistance to a British man who is detained in Ukraine. We remain in close contact with the Ukrainian authorities.”
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A Russian-flagged tanker claiming to be carrying sunflower oil to Georgia reported a drone attack off the Turkish coast on Tuesday in which its 13 crew members were unharmed, Turkey’s maritime authority and the Tribeca shipping agency said. Ukraine said it had nothing to do with the attack of the Midvolga-2, which is described by online registries as an oil and chemical products tanker. Turkey has reported three Russia-linked tankers coming under attack off its coast in the Black Sea in recent days. A Ukrainian security source told AFP its forces had used naval drones to hit two of the tankers, on Friday last week, claiming that both vessels were “covertly transporting Russian oil”.
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Vladimir Putin on Tuesday condemned the attacks as piracy and threatened to take measures against tankers of countries that help Ukraine, as well as intensifying Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian facilities and vessels. Another oil tanker, the Panamanian-flagged Mersin, was struck off the coast of Dakar by four external explosions last week after it left Russia, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the ship’s Turkish owners and the Senegalese authorities. Expert opinions were mixed as to whether Ukraine was involved in that case, AFP reported.
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The European Commission plans to make a legal proposal this week to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine while also leaving open the possibility of borrowing on financial markets or mixing the two options, four sources told Reuters on Tuesday. It will be discussed by the EU executive on Wednesday. EU leaders agreed in October to meet Ukraine’s “pressing financial needs” for the next two years but stopped short of endorsing a plan to use €140bn in frozen Russian sovereign assets in Europe as a loan for Kyiv, due to fierce Belgian government objections that because Belgium hosts the Euroclear depository holding most of the Russian assets, it could be at risk from legal retaliation if they are seized.
