and focused on "aspects of a Ukrainian settlement". The talks, Witkoff's third with Putin this year, were described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as "productive".

Trump has expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: "Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war." It comes as Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg denied suggesting the country could be partitioned. Russia's army, he reportedly suggested, could then remain in the occupied east. "You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two", the paper quoted him as saying. Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had "misrepresented" what he said. "I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine's sovereignty," he wrote on X, adding: "I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine." (BBC)