Zelenskyy agrees to freeze the front and Putin agrees to resume trilateral talks on Ukraine
Kyiv / St. Petersburg — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is willing to freeze the battlefront with Russia, while the Kremlin agreed to resume trilateral negotiations with the United States and Ukraine, in the most significant diplomatic shift in recent weeks in the war.
Zelenskyy said so Wednesday in an interview on Fox News' "Fox & Friends": "Yes, right now, we have to freeze... We call it ceasefire or 'stop killing' like President Trump called it," he said, using the U.S. president's formula. According to the Ukrainian leader, freezing the current lines would allow Ukraine to keep about 75% of its territory.
Almost in parallel, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff met for about three hours with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday at the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg. After the meeting, Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said Putin is "ready in principle" to resume a trilateral negotiating round between Russia, the United States and Ukraine after November 10, with a "security framework" on the table, CNN reported.
Ushakov told the Russia 24 channel that a possible venue for the new round would be Abu Dhabi, which already hosted meetings in January and February of this year. There have been three rounds in total in 2026 — two in Abu Dhabi and one in Geneva in February — with progress limited to prisoner exchanges.
Witkoff had been in Oslo on Tuesday with Zelenskyy, in a meeting also joined by video by Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, according to CNN. The diplomatic sequence follows Russia's release of American citizen Stephen Hubbard, a gesture the Kremlin linked to contacts with Trump's envoy.
Freezing the front is the first time Zelenskyy has publicly accepted that formula in these terms, although Kyiv insists on security guarantees. The Kremlin, for its part, conditions negotiations on discussing the status of the territories it claims. The tentative date after November 10 opens a three-week window to set the venue and agenda.
Photo: RPP