Washington expects the Kiev government to support agreements reached during the latest phone conversation between the presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, the US president’s Special Envoy Steven Witkoff told Fox News in an interview.
"I had two meetings with President Putin. The first one was for somewhere close to three and a half hours, and the second one was close to four hours. They were both compelling," he said.
"I thought we accomplished quite a bit, and in the second meeting, we actually really narrowed the issues, certainly from the Russian standpoint, we were immediately in discussions on tangible, granular ways to move forward towards a ceasefire that included what you've heard about today, which is the ceasefire with regard to energy infrastructure from both sides, something they've been trying to put together for quite some time."
"And secondly, what people colloquially refer to as the Black Sea, maritime aspect of a ceasefire. I think both of those are now agreed to by the Russians. I am certainly hopeful that the Ukrainians will agree to it," the US official went on.
Witkoff added that the sides "have some details to work out, of course," but "that will begin on Sunday in Jeddah."
"And beyond that, we'll move to a full ceasefire, and we had some very good conversation today on the ingredients to achieve that. So all in all, really positive results," he said, without giving any details of the forthcoming talks.
Speaking about the upcoming consultations in Jeddah, Trump’s special envoy said Washington would send to Saudi Arabia a team "led by our national security advisor [Mike Waltz] and our Secretary of State [Marco Rubio]."
"We've got to figure out the details. The point is that up until recently, we really didn't have consensus around these two aspects, the energy and infrastructure ceasefire and the Black Sea moratorium on firing. And today we got to that place, and I think it's a relatively short distance to a full ceasefire from there," he continued.
"President Putin - and I would commend him for this - said that he agreed with the President's posture on it all. He agreed with the approach. He didn't want to see more people dying in the field," Witkoff added.
