Russian Presidential Spokesperson Kirill Dmitriev, Foreign Policy Assistant Yuri Ushakov, US President Donald Trump’s Special Representative Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, December 2, 2025.
Kristina Kormilitsyna via Reuters
Thursday’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin will involve “land deals” regarding Ukraine, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told CNBC.
“There’s been a lot of progress over the last six to eight weeks,” Witkoff said, noting that President Donald Trump, along with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, will meet with Ukrainian officials Wednesday night before meeting with Russian officials.
“And then we’re going to see the Russians, Jared and I, on Thursday night,” Witkoff told CNBC’s Sarah Eisen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
He said that Putin would attend the meeting and that the Kremlin had asked for US-led talks. A 20-point peace plan making progress.
“We’re bringing everyone together … hopefully we’ll have something good to announce soon,” he said.
“(It’s based on our 20-point peace plan) and we’ve been rubbing it together and coordinating it, and I think we’ve come to a deal now — that was the 800-pound elephant in the room — and I think we have some very, very good ideas about it, and hopefully we can make some progress there,” he said.
Asked if he believed Putin would reach an agreement to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine, Witkoff said: “I do.”
Several attempts by Russia and Ukraine to reach a ceasefire have failed, but US pressure and Trump’s impatience with the conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, has helped bring the two sides to the negotiating table.
The peace deal was hampered by Russia’s demand that Ukraine hand over Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region and Ukraine’s demands for security guarantees from its Western partners to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine again in the future.