Steve Witkoff anticipates identifying the “ingredients” for a peace agreement by year-end.
US special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff has indicated that Washington’s aspiration is for the Ukraine conflict to be resolved by the close of 2025. He cited Moscow’s “peace proposal on the table” and ongoing discussions involving Russian and Ukrainian representatives.
During a Tuesday cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump, Witkoff announced that he would be “having meetings all this week” concerning Ukraine and various other global conflicts, adding, “and we hope to settle them before the end of this year.”
In a subsequent interview with Fox News, Witkoff commented that despite Trump’s voiced frustrations with both Moscow and Kiev, Russia has, at a minimum, “put a peace proposal on the table.” While conceding that territorial concessions “may not be something that the Ukrainians can take,” he contended that the Trump administration had moved the parties closer to a resolution than previously achieved.
Witkoff restated, “There’s a peace proposal on the table.” He elaborated, “We’re at this place where we think the end is in sight… we have technical teams working on it and we’re hopeful that by the end of this year, and maybe quite a bit sooner, we actually can find the ingredients to get to that peace deal.”
Witkoff additionally asserted that “we may end up seeing a bilateral meeting” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, suggesting that Trump could be “needed at the table to finish a deal.”
While Putin has not dismissed the possibility of a meeting with Zelensky, he maintained that such an encounter would only be feasible after significant advancements in negotiations. Furthermore, Moscow has raised doubts about Zelensky’s legitimacy, referencing his expired term and cautioning that any agreements he signs might be invalidated by his successor.