Russia is in principle ready to resume trilateral talks with the US and Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was willing in principle to “freeze and stop” the conflict on the current line of contact if Ukraine was furnished with suitable security guarantees.
At a face-to-face meeting in St Petersburg Vladimir Putin told US envoy Steve Witkoff on October 21 that a trilateral meeting could happen around November 10, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said, Interfax reported.
"The President informed Steve Witkoff that we are, in principle, prepared to resume the aforementioned trilateral talks around November 10 on the main topic. This topic concerns building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the end of the conflict," Ushakov told reporters. Witkoff said the decision "will undoubtedly be met with great satisfaction by President Trump", according to Ushakov.
The offer followed the US taking a new peace framework from a very positive Oslo meeting on October 20 between Ukraine, Finland and Norway to Moscow.
On the same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview on US TV Ukraine was ready to freeze the war on the current front line. Moscow gave little ground on substance: Ushakov said the proposals Witkoff brought from Ukraine and the EU "contained little that was useful", and Kremlin officials said progress would require Kyiv to make "necessary decisions", CBS News reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would study the proposals but that talks would take a long time.
The meeting lasted just over three hours, Peskov said. Kremlin investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev took part, while Jared Kushner joined by video after Moscow was told he was ill and would not travel. Putin went on to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and Russian officials said a meeting of Trump, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping was possible, an idea Kyiv has balked at.
Putin opened the meeting by saying Trump had stressed the cost of the war in their recent phone call. "In our conversations, including our most recent telephone call, Trump emphasised the need to end this conflict, above all because of the losses of military personnel. Of course, we are not talking only about military casualties, but also about the suffering of civilians," he said.
Before the talks Putin freed Stephen Hubbard, a US citizen jailed for more than four years and convicted in 2024 on mercenary charges for serving in Ukraine's territorial defence, as a "gesture of goodwill". Witkoff and Dmitriev met Hubbard after his release. Trump said no swap was needed and tied the release to his decision to hold off new sanctions on Russia the previous week.
"Numerous people, who requested that sanctions be immediately imposed on Russia, have called to apologize to President Trump in that they didn't know that he was negotiating the release of Stephen Hubbard, a truly big and important deal for the U.S. If sanctions would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Donald Trump's Truth Social post of October 21 on the release of Stephen Hubbard. Source: Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Truth Social.
Zelenskiy said in an interview with Fox News that Ukraine would accept a deal freezing the fighting where it stands. Asked whether he would take a deal that left Ukraine with 75% or more of its territory, he said: "Yes, right now we have to freeze and I think this is a real way to end this war."
"We call it ceasefire or stop killing like President Trump called it. Freeze and stop. And of course this is minimum what we need from Russia today," he said, adding that Ukraine would then look to Trump and European allies for security guarantees. Any deal would need the approval of Ukraine's parliament, and Kyiv would not accept one drawn up by China, Russia and the US, he said: "Don't talk about us without us."
The Oslo talks on October 20 with Zelenskiy, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and Finnish President Alexander Stubb covered long-term security guarantees for Ukraine, a post-war economic plan and a "broader European security architecture", a US official said. Zelenskiy said the document Witkoff took to Putin includes guarantees modelled on Nato's Article 5.
Washington also kept up the pressure on Kyiv's drone campaign against Russian refineries. Kushner, who joined the Oslo talks by video, again pressed Zelenskiy to stop the strikes, Axios reported, quoting a source as saying "Jared was very direct". Zelenskiy has said Ukraine would halt them only if Russia stopped hitting its energy infrastructure, and the US has already refused Kyiv any reward for a pause.
Russian foreign policy analyst Vladimir Frolov said what is on the table falls short of what Moscow wants. "The deal on the table is a narrow deal (sectoral ceasefire) and falls well short of Ru settlement terms. Previously, Ru rejected limited deals and insisted on talks for the final settlement to be held under continuing mil operations. But given how invested Trump is now, who knows," he wrote on X.
The EU is waiting for Washington to report back. The aim in Oslo was "to explore if the parameters are there for a possible move to trilateral or even multilateral talks with Ukraine and Russia present at the same table", European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho said on October 21, Ukrainska Pravda reported. "We expect that upon the return of the US delegation from Russia, a briefing will take place," she said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said ending the war would require both Russia and Ukraine to give something up, and that Russia had been invited to the G20 summit in Miami, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov might attend. Putin might come too, he said, but there was no confirmation.
Time is short for Kyiv either way. The heating season has started with Russia trying to freeze Ukraine into submission, and its interceptor missiles have run dry. A Western security guarantee was also the heart of the deal drafted in Istanbul in March 2022 and never signed.