Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner attend a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 2, 2025.
Kristina Kormilitsyna | Via Reuters
A meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to take place on Thursday with “land deals” over Ukraine on the table, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told CNBC.
“[There’s been] lots of progress in the last six to eight weeks,” Witkoff said, noting that he and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would be meeting Ukrainian officials Wednesday evening before meeting top Russian officials.
“And then we’ll be seeing the Russians, Jared and I, sometime on Thursday evening,” Witkoff told CNBC’s Sara Eisen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Putin would be present at the meeting, Witkoff said, noting that the Kremlin had requested the talks.
Witkoff said discussions over a U.S.-led 20-point peace plan making progress.
“We’re bringing everyone closer …hopefully we’ll have something good to announce soon,” he said.
“[Regarding] our 20-point peace plan, we’re massaging it and harmonizing it, and I think we’re down to land deals now — that’s been the 800 lb elephant in the room — and I think we have some very, very good ideas around that, and hopefully we’ll be able to make some progress there,” he said.
In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff during a meeting in Saint Petersburg on April 11, 2025.
Gavriil Grigorov | Afp | Getty Images
Asked if he believed Putin would come to a deal to end the almost four-year war in Ukraine, Witkoff said: “I do.”
“I just sense that everybody wants a peace there, that it’s time.”
Multiple attempts to get Russia and Ukraine to agree on a ceasefire have failed, but pressure from the U.S. and Trump’s impatience with the ongoing conflict — which has seen hundreds of thousands of soldier and civilian deaths — has helped to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
Entrenched obstacles to a peace deal were Russia’s demands that Ukraine hand over its eastern Donbas region, and Ukraine’s demands for security guarantees from Western partners to deter Russia from invading Ukraine again in the future.
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