Steve Witkoff labels meeting with Putin envoy ‘productive’ ahead of scheduled Ukraine-Russia talks

US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Miami on Saturday, describing the talks as “productive and constructive” ahead of a second round of Ukraine-Russia negotiations scheduled to take place in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

The meeting, which also was attended by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and White House adviser Josh Gruenbaum, took place amid US efforts to advance a “peaceful resolution” to the Ukraine conflict, according to Witkoff.

“We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine,” Witkoff wrote on X. 

Dmitriev likewise described the meeting as “productive,” saying it took place within an “American-Russian economic working group” framework that he later added featured a “constructive” discussion with US Treasury Secretary Bessent.

Saturday’s meeting came before Ukrainian and Russian delegations were expected to hold a second round of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi on Sunday to negotiate a White House-backed plan to end the almost four-year-old war in Ukraine.

Last weekend, negotiating teams from Moscow and Kyiv met in Abu Dhabi under US mediation for the time since the start of Russia’s full-scale war, with US President Volodymyr Zelensky later saying that fewer “problematic issues” separated Moscow and Kyiv following the talks.   

However, Zelensky appeared to later cast doubt on whether additional talks would take place this weekend, noting in his nightly address on Saturday that Kyiv was awaiting "specific details” from Washington regarding further meetings “next week”.

He also confirmed that several regions in Ukraine and Moldova had been left without energy on Saturday following disruptions to Ukraine’s power grid, which he termed a “technical incident” that was likely caused by extreme weather, rather than “external interference”. 

During his nightly address on Friday, Zelensky said that neither Moscow nor Kyiv had conducted strikes ⁠on energy targets since first Trump announced a week-long moratorium on energy infrastructure attacks on Thursday, and did not report any such Russian strikes over the weekend. 

In Ukraine’s eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, however, local authorities reported on Sunday that two people had been killed in a Russian overnight attack that also damaged a “gas pipeline and a power line” and several private homes.

Elsewhere in the country, casualties were also reported in the central region of Kherson, where a local resident was hospitalised following a concussion and shrapnel wound, and in southeastern Zaporizhzhia, where local authorities said two civilians were injured by Russian shelling over the past day, without providing further details.