President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s ready to resume trilateral negotiations with the U.S. and Ukraine on a potential peace deal, according to the Kremlin.

Putin made the offer during more than three hours of talks in St. Petersburg with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in an audio briefing. Russia’s prepared to have such three-way talks during a period in the first ten days of November, he said, without specifying the level of officials involved.

“The issue concerns the establishment of a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the end of the conflict,” Ushakov said.

Witkoff arrived in Russia from Oslo, where he held talks on Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. The U.S. envoy told Putin at the start of their talks that he’d brought documents setting out proposals for a potential resolution of the war following the “productive” discussions in Norway.

Ushakov appeared dismissive of those ideas in his briefing, however. While Putin noted “some new elements” in the approaches of Kyiv and the Europeans outlined by Witkoff, “they contained relatively little that was useful in the context of settling the Ukraine crisis,” Ushakov said.

As the talks in Russia were taking place, Zelenskyy told the Fox & Friends show in the U.S. that his troops are still struggling with access to Starlink satellite internet. He said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had pledged to “work with his team” to restore the SpaceX company’s service, which is essential for Ukraine’s defense and has emerged as a focus of escalating tensions with the U.S. administration over the last several days.

Putin on Wednesday proposed a meeting with Trump in China, where the Russian leader is due to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting next month. He told Witkoff that Russia was ready to help resolve the Middle East conflict and was interested in restoring economic ties with the U.S.

Witkoff said at the start of their meeting that he sought “some good conversation between us about a resumption potentially of trilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States,” in video posted on Telegram by Russian state media.

Zelenskyy told the U.S. show that he was ready for a trilateral meeting with the American and Russian presidents or any other format as long as his country is represented at the table. “I always said that we are open to negotiate in any format, any topics,” he said. “But don’t speak about us without us, please.”

The latest diplomatic initiatives represent an attempt to revive negotiations on a deal to end the full-scale invasion that Putin ordered in February 2022. Talks have largely stalled since February as the Trump administration focused on the war with Iran.

The meetings follow a more than week-long feud sparked by Trump’s deal with Putin to allow Russia to sell some diesel into global markets as the U.S. president seeks to lower surging gasoline prices ahead of Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections. The spat quickly escalated into mutual accusations, with Trump suggesting Zelenskyy should step aside as the president and the Ukrainian leader accusing him of trying to push Ukraine into surrender.

Russia views Norway and Finland as “new participants from the European side” in negotiations on resolving the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television. “We’ll see to what extent they can make a constructive contribution. And whether they can,” he said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said “progress” had been made at the talks in Oslo and Europe was always ready to talk about a settlement to the war.

“But the surrender or even unconditional surrender for Ukraine is not an option because this were a surrender of all of us,” Merz said on a panel at the Berlin Global Dialogue on Wednesday moderated by Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg’s head of economics and government coverage.

Zelenskyy told Fox & Friends he wants any peace deal with Russia to go to a referendum because the Ukrainian people needed to have a say in what might be a decision involving a loss of some territories. For now, Ukraine is willing to freeze the war along the current frontline before moving to talks and discussion on U.S. security guarantees, he said.

“Of course we can support or not support the deal,” Zelenskyy said. “But first of all, only one nation has to support it: Ukrainian people, because it’s our losses.”

Witkoff departed St. Petersburg after the meeting with Putin. The Norwegian premier told public broadcaster NRK that he expects the U.S. envoy to return to Oslo. Zelenskyy said he won’t be in Norway to meet Witkoff again and plans to return to Ukraine.

Witkoff thanked Putin for ordering the release of an American prisoner, Stephen Hubbard, who’d been held since 2022 after being captured in Ukraine.

During their meeting, Putin told Witkoff he also wanted to hear an assessment of the Middle East conflict with Iran, saying Russia had a “special, trusting relationship” with Tehran.

“If there is anything we can do to improve this further, we would be happy to do so,” Putin said.

—With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.