U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with President Vladimir Putin on 11th April, 2025 in St. Petersburg about the search for a peace deal on Ukraine. The theme of the meeting was ‘aspects of a Ukrainian settlement.’ Witkoff has emerged as a key figure in the on-off rapprochement between Moscow and Washington amid talk on the Russian side of potential joint investments in the Arctic and in Russian rare earth minerals.

Trump has spoken of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a Ukrainian deal. In recent days, Ukrainian officials have sent Washington a list of targets it believes Russia has struck in violation of the energy infrastructure ceasefire the two countries agreed to last month, according to two people familiar with the list.

Putin has said that Ukraine should not join NATO, that the size of its army needs to be limited and that Russia should get the entirety of the territory of the four Ukrainian regions it claims as its own despite not fully controlling them. He has said he is ready in principle to agree to a full ceasefire, while emphasising that crucial implementation details remain unresolved and what he describes as the war's root causes have yet to be addressed.