Trump tells Russia to ‘get moving’

With just under a week to go until the supposed Easter deadline, it appears that Donald Trump is no closer to securing a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The President’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff travelled to St Petersburg yesterday for talks on ‘aspects of a Ukraine settlement’ with Vladimir Putin. The fact that neither produced a read-out of the four and a half hour meeting afterwards implies that, yet again, Trump’s representative has come away without having achieved much meaningful progress.

While the Americans may have hoped yesterday’s meeting would perhaps bring Putin closer to the negotiating table with Ukraine, the Russians were clearly under no such illusion. Ahead of the meeting, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated: ‘There is no need to expect any breakthroughs here. The process of normalising relations and searching for grounds for entering the trajectory of a settlement around Ukraine is underway.