Ukraine talks: US envoy meets Vladimir Putin in Russia

The U.S.'s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is on his way to St. Petersburg, where he'll meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. It comes a day after what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described as very productive and constructive discussions with President Donald Trump's envoys in Oslo. For the talks in Oslo taking place amid a new low in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, it follows an energy ceasefire announced unilaterally by Trump, which Kyiv implemented for several days, but Russia ignored. of France 24's international affairs editors. Philip Tell is here with me in the studio to tell us more. Good to see you, Philip. So tell us what Trump is expecting to achieve out of this decision to throw Zelensky under the bus. Well, it's difficult to know whether or not we're actually going to make any progress or they're going to make any progress in trying to push Vladimir Putin to come to the negotiating table and to sign some kind of deal with Ukraine. I'll come to that in just a few minutes. Just to give you a look about where we are with all of this right now, There has been a lot of arguments going on between the United States and Ukraine over the past 10 days or so, and there are many people who think that Donald Trump literally has thrown Vladimir Zelensky under the bus because he's now given his support to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. This all came to a head with the announcement of this contract to import Russian oil to the United States, 300,000 tons of diesel. That was made on the 9th of October. Then there was the announcement of a lifting of sanctions, U.S. sanctions against Russia, which had been signed by Donald Trump himself. Then Donald Trump announced out of the blue a halt, an agreement by both sides to stop attacks on each other's energy infrastructure, Ukraine and Russia. uh ukraine uh said okay well we'll uh we'll adhere to that but russia didn't so then ukraine announced it was going to continue uh fighting uh and firing missiles into uh russia on energy energy uh infrastructures uh that angered donald trump who then went and said it's time for ukraine to get a new president uh and someone new needs to negotiate on behalf of ukraine so there is this pressure on the ukrainian president now we've had these discussions taking place in uh oslo the norwegian capital uh and there seems to be some progress moving forward uh even the the delegates have said there's been a lot of progress certainly under the radar uh and there is growing pressure on ukraine to make a deal but donald trump announced after that that uh he he really expected ukraine to make a deal on russia's terms which of course is something that ukraine has always said that it's not willing to do it wants to negotiate with russia it's not ready to do that but also it has to be on terms which are interesting for the Ukrainians. There are a couple of other aspects here which I think are interesting to underline. First of all, there was the discussion over the slow speed of the Starshield Internet service, which prevented Ukraine from detecting incoming drones last week. A report in the Wall Street Journal published last night said it was Elon Musk who gave the order for that slowing down of the Internet service to take place. He then was discussing this with Donald Trump on the phone. We don't know if that discussion happened before or after the decision to slow down the Internet service was made. Donald Trump said he was confused about what had happened afterwards. And there's been no delivery of Patriot interceptor missiles from Europe to Ukraine for a while. They are saying it's the United States preventing this from happening. There are two aspects here. First of all, Patriot interceptor missiles, which have been paid for, that are coming from the United States, paid for by the Europeans that haven't been delivered. And there are Patriot missiles that are in Europe already. The Europeans have said they are willing to deliver those to Ukraine. But so far, the United States hasn't given its green light for that to happen. So that is something that Ukraine says it definitely wants to see moving forward. And meanwhile, today we have this meeting between Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. What's going to be on the agenda for that? Well, I don't want to sound too pessimistic here. But what we've seen already from the United States is that these deals that have been signed already with Russia have one aim, and that is to try to boost support for Donald Trump during the upcoming midterm elections. He wants Republicans to think that, well, there is more oil coming into the United States, more diesel. This is going to bring down prices at the pumps, which is highly unlikely ahead of the midterm elections. But it's to show that Donald Trump is doing things, even if it means signing a pact with Russia, giving Russia money, which can then be used in the war against Ukraine. That is what Ukraine is angry about, saying this is costing lives in Ukraine because Donald Trump wants to give the Republicans as much chance as possible of winning as many seats as they can in the midterm elections. This is difficult to see what the response from Vladimir Putin is going to be to all of this. Because remember that Vladimir Putin has always said that there is going to be no giving in of Russia's demands as far as Ukraine is concerned and that whatever happens, it will only agree to capitulation by Ukraine as a way out of the war. We will only make peace on our terms. That has always been the message coming out from from Russia. So Steve Witkoff is going to St. Petersburg to meet Vladimir Putin. he's going to take with him a demand for strong security guarantees for european integration once the war is over for the fact that european countries can come in in a peacekeeping mission in ukraine to make sure that there will be no further incursions by russia in the future and that Russia must address the issues necessary to end the war it's pretty clear that Vladimir Putin is not really going to want to do any of that he will continue his stated aim to reverse some of the repercussions uh at the end of the Soviet Union that affected Russia made it a smaller country uh he will continue to threaten the Baltic states and the eastern flank of NATO he will probably continue to interfere in elections in Europe certainly amongst Ukraine's allies and to launch cyber attacks what basically is happening here is that Vladimir Putin knows that he is the master of time the longer he holds out the more chance he has of winning what he wants that's say the capitulation of Ukraine. He knows that there are elections coming up in Europe within the next year or so and that there are more far-right movements taking control or just about to take control in Europe. We have AfD in Germany that's won quite a lot of seats already. We have the elections here in France with Marine Le Pen. She said that she's willing to stop funding Ukraine after six months. So Vladimir Putin knows that there will be a split within in Europe over funding of Ukraine and that will only be good news for him just the perfect conditions aren't they thank you so much Philip for that Philip tell there with that piece of analysis