Putin meets with Witkoff on Ukraine, threatens strikes on ships

Tony Halpin and Olesia Safronova, Bloomberg News on Dec 2, 2025

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Vladimir Putin began talks at the Kremlin with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on the latest plans aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Russian president, who was joined by his foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, said in comments shown on state television that he was pleased to see the Americans. Witkoff praised Moscow as a “magnificent city” after Putin asked whether they’d been on a walk around the capital before the talks.

Putin’s meeting with Witkoff and Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, follows negotiations between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Florida on the proposals aimed at reaching a deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with his negotiating team in Ireland earlier Tuesday to get a “detailed briefing” on the Florida talks.

Ahead of the Kremlin meeting, Putin threatened strikes on ships of countries supporting Ukraine if a surge in attacks on Moscow’s tanker fleet in the past week doesn’t halt. “What the Ukrainian armed forces are doing now is piracy,” he told reporters in Moscow.

Zelenskyy said he’s waiting for the results of the meeting in Moscow. “I am ready to receive all signals, ready to meet with President Trump — everything depends on today’s talks,” he told reporters in Dublin. “The dialogues can continue, but results are needed.”

Amid fears in Europe that the U.S. plan risks rewarding Russian aggression by forcing Kyiv into a deal, Zelenskyy said during a visit to Paris, where he met with Witkoff and French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, that the latest version “looks better."

Putin has signaled an openness to talks, saying last week that Trump’s proposals for ending the war could be “the basis for future agreements,” while adding that no final version exists yet. Still, he’s given no sign that he’s ready to roll back Russian demands.

Putin claimed late Monday that his troops had taken the key Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, an advance that would be Russia’s most significant on the battlefield in nearly two years. Ukraine’s Military Staff denied its forces had lost the city.

Bloomberg isn’t able to independently verify the claims of either side.

Witkoff, who’s meeting Putin in Russia for the sixth time this year, promoted an original 28-point plan that emerged last month and was drawn up with Dmitriev. Those proposals horrified officials in Ukraine and Europe by outlining Russian demands for concessions that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.

An Oct. 14 phone call between Witkoff and Ushakov showed that the U.S. envoy suggested they work together on a plan to end the war in Ukraine modeled on Trump’s Gaza peace deal, according to a recording of the conversation reviewed and transcribed by Bloomberg. Ushakov and Dmitriev also discussed the plans in an Oct. 29 phone call.

Zelenskyy told reporters that Witkoff was “very welcome to Ukraine,” but that he wasn’t sure if the U.S. delegation “are on this way these days, that they are ready to come.”

The seizure of Pokrovsk, a defensive hub that’s been the focus of intense fighting for more than a year, would potentially open up the path for Russia to threaten the larger cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. It would offer Moscow a symbolic victory as Putin continues to insist that Ukraine must surrender the entire Donetsk region under a deal to end the war.

Putin claimed in October that his military had encircled Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk. That was rejected by Ukraine, though it acknowledged Russian soldiers had entered the city.

Russia’s forces are spreading through Pokrovsk, particularly in central and northern areas, in an attempt to seize the city, the DeepState mapping service that cooperates with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said late Monday.

Trump has urged Russia and Ukraine to halt fighting along existing battle lines as part of the peace initiative. After meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, Trump abandoned plans in October for a second summit in Budapest when the U.S. concluded that Moscow wasn’t ready for substantive changes to its maximalist demands for ending the war.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he’ll agree to a ceasefire.

Russia first attempted to occupy Pokrovsk, a former mining hub that’s now almost totally destroyed, in July 2024. A surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive into Russia’s Kursk region the following month helped relieve the pressure as Moscow diverted forces to confront the incursion.

After Russia drove Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, with help from North Korean soldiers sent by Kim Jong Un to support Putin, Moscow renewed strikes on Pokrovsk during the summer.

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(With assistance from Maxim Edwards, Daryna Krasnolutska, Volodymyr Verbianyi, Jennifer Duggan and Aliaksandr Kudrytski.)

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