Putin meets Trump envoy as US seeks to end war in Ukraine

Kate Sullivan and Natalia Drozdiak, Bloomberg News on Aug 6, 2025

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The White House is racing to beat another self-imposed deadline to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine, with President Donald Trump leaning hard on his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to get Moscow to halt the fighting.

President Vladimir Putin met with Witkoff for almost three hours in the Kremlin on Wednesday, the Interfax news service reported, just two days before an Aug. 8 deadline Trump set for Russia to reach a truce or face potential sanctions. While Putin has said he won’t abandon his campaign in Ukraine, people familiar with the situation said the Kremlin might offer the U.S. concessions that could include halting airstrikes in a bid to avert new economic penalties.

Witkoff’s fifth meeting with the Russian leader this year follows an apparent shift in Trump’s approach to the war, which initially saw him focus his pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy only to increasingly express frustration with Putin in recent weeks. The barrage of Russian drones that have rained down on Ukrainian cities and the resulting images of destruction have made an impression on the U.S. president, according to people close to him.

Trump is now publicly betting that Putin’s growing economic woes will eventually force him to end an invasion that is in its fourth year, saying in a CNBC interview Tuesday that “if energy goes down low enough, Putin’s going to stop killing people.”

“If you get energy down another $10 a barrel, he’s going to have no choice, because his economy stinks,” Trump added.

The U.S. president has threatened so-called secondary sanctions on purchasers of Russian energy to ramp up the pressure on Putin. It’s a risky gamble, as the Joe Biden administration found. Penalizing purchasers of Russian oil without rocking global markets requires a delicate calculus that can hurt friends as well as foes. Even Trump has shared skepticism that the penalties could work, calling the Russians “wily characters” who are “pretty good at avoiding sanctions.”

Meanwhile, Trump will be eager to avoid any economic fallout at home. U.S. consumers are managing still-high prices at the pump this year, and domestic oil producers could struggle with supply constraints. Trump has insisted he isn’t worried about the potential impact sanctions would have within the U.S., telling reporters on Air Force One last week that the U.S. could ramp up its own energy production.

“We have some oil in our country,” Trump said. “We’ll just step it up even further.”

Short of Witkoff scoring an unlikely peace deal, Trump will face enhanced scrutiny as he decides whether to follow through on his latest sanctions threat. The U.S. president has floated tougher penalties on Russia before but walked back to preserve negotiations.

If Putin wins yet another reprieve from tougher sanctions that risks reinforcing the narrative from some investors that “Trump Always Chickens Out” — a bet made in reference to his tariff threats — that could also undercut his self-professed image as a peacemaker who says he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

If Trump does follow through on his sanctions threat, punishing purchasers of Russian oil imperils already delicate relations with two of the world’s biggest economies, China and India.

Trump has been trading barbs with India for several days, and on Tuesday morning said he would pile on more levies “over the next 24 hours” — on top of a 25% tariff rate — as Indian officials have held firm on their energy buys and called the U.S. attacks unjustified. Punishing China for its Russian energy purchases could derail efforts to extend a tariff truce with Beijing that Trump said was “getting very close to a deal.”

Zelenskyy spoke with Trump on Tuesday, calling it a “productive” conversation and raising awareness of Russia’s ramped-up attacks. The White House confirmed the call but didn’t provide further details on the discussion. Ukrainian officials also are expecting to see U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv by week’s end, according to a local media report.

Some European governments remain concerned that Witkoff could be more accommodating to Putin because he has shown himself to be the member of the administration most willing to listen to the Russian leader, said a European diplomat, who asked not to be identified without permission to speak publicly. There’s also concern that Russia’s aim is to prolong the war in Ukraine as long as possible without facing punishment from the U.S., the person said.

Kyiv and its European allies have pushed in calls and meetings to get Trump to re-engage after he suggested that he might walk away from efforts to end the war earlier this year. The appeals reached a crescendo in June at the NATO summit, where allies agreed to Trump’s demands for big increases in defense spending and he toned down criticism of the alliance.

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—With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska, Catherine Lucey, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Skylar Woodhouse, Gregory White, Alberto Nardelli, Andrea Palasciano and Eric Martin.