Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said he engaged in “constructive” discussions with US officials on ending the war in Ukraine while attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday.
After holding talks with US President Donald Trump’s roving envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Dmitriev told reporters that “the meetings are constructive, and more and more people are realising that Russia’s position is right,” per AFP.
Reuters had previously reported that Dmitriev would hold talks with US officials on the sidelines of the forum. The Kremlin has also said that it will host Witkoff and Kushner once again in Moscow for further discussions, though a date has yet to be determined.
Russian representatives have not been invited to the annual Davos meetings since the WEF froze its ties with Moscow in March 2022.
The comment came after a Ukrainian delegation on Saturday traveled to Miami to sign off on a pair of key peace documents with the US delegation concerning binding security guarantees for Ukraine and a $800 billion postwar reconstruction and prosperity framework.
President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of the talks signaled optimism, going so far as to say that he hoped the documents would be signed on the sidelines of the WEF in the Swiss Alps resort town this week.
However, the period following the Miami meeting saw a conspicuous silence, with US officials making no announcements, statements or even public acknowledgement of the discussions, even as the Ukrainian delegation described “substantial consultations” in their own social media posts.
Zelensky said in response to a question by Kyiv Post on Tuesday that despite this, negotiations have not met a “dead end.”
“Work on the documents is ongoing. The talks are constant, and they are definitely not about a stalemate,” he explained, adding that Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is in contact with Witkoff and Kushner.
Last week, prior to the US-Ukraine bilateral talks, Trump had framed Zelensky as an impediment in the peace process, suggesting that Moscow wanted to find a settlement even as Russia continued its relentless attacks on the embattled country.
For its part, Russia appeared as intransigent as ever, with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying last Thursday that Moscow will “continue to consistently pursue the goals it has set” in Ukraine in the absence of its own so-called security guarantees.
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said: “The Kremlin has been delaying the peace process for months in order to protract the war and achieve Russia’s original war aims through military means.”
There have been further signs over the past few days that ties between Washington and Moscow remain warm.
In a prospective diplomatic overture, the Kremlin announced on Monday that Putin, alongside Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, had been invited to join Trump’s US-led “Peace Council” for Gaza designed to manage the strip after a ceasefire.
Furthermore, despite Trump citing the threat from Russia as a rationale for annexing Greenland, a proposal which has spurred heated tensions within NATO over the last few days, Russia has reacted to the US president’s efforts with barely disguised glee.
Russian Press Secretary Peskov on Monday said that Trump would “make history” by annexing the Arctic island, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov smugly celebrated the shrinking “prospects of preserving NATO as a unified Western military-political bloc.”
Trump is expected to hold a special address at the Davos summit on Wednesday amid rising tensions with European NATO countries over his desire to seize the semiautonomous Danish territory.