President Donald Trump’s patience is being tested by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched a barrage of airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, killing 12 people and injuring nearly 100 more this week, one day ahead of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s fourth visit to Moscow.
Trump told reporters Friday he believes it is “possible” and even “very probable” his administration will negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
“I think, in the end, we’re going to end up with a lot of good deals, including tariff deals and trade deals. We’re going to make our country rich,” Trump said ahead of his departure for Rome. “We’re going to try and get out of war so that we can save 5,000 people a week. That’s what my aim is.”
Steve Witkoff meets with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg (Reuters )
An official with knowledge of the talks told Fox News Digital Friday that “Ambassador Witkoff is in Russia to meet with President Putin as part of President Trump’s efforts to make peace.
“It’s long past time for the death and destruction to stop, to move past the failed strategies of the past and for an end to this devastating conflict,” the official added without commenting on the “substance of negotiations.”
A report by Axios this week suggested the White House had extended a “final offer” to Ukraine and Russia that called on Kyiv to recognize Russia’s occupation of nearly all the Luhansk region and the occupied areas of the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
It also said the U.S. would agree to recognize Crimea, which Putin illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014, as now legally a part of Russia, and that Washington would lift sanctions.
A woman with two children cries near a makeshift memorial on a playground while honoring the memory of a Russian missile strike’s victims April 6, 2025, in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine. (Mykola Domashov/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Neither the White House nor the National Security Council responded to Fox News Digital’s repeated questions about whether there will be consequences for Putin should he fail to enter into an agreement with Ukraine.
The administration also did not comment on why it believes Putin wants to enter into an agreement with the U.S. when security officials have repeatedly warned otherwise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already said he will not acknowledge Crimea as a part of Russia but rather as Ukrainian land illegally occupied by Russia.
Zelenskyy also on Thursday posted a 2018 “Crimea declaration” by Trump’s first-term Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, which said, “No country can change the borders of another by force” in a move to signify Trump’s apparent position change that now favors Russia.
