Authored by Guy Birchall via The Epoch Times,
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said he is set to meet with Ukrainian representatives in the United States this week during an interview on Tuesday.
“I’m meeting with the Ukrainians this week. So I will be meeting with them this week in New York, and that’s a big signal,” Witkoff said on Fox News’ “Special Report” with Bret Baier.
“We talk to the Russians every day,” he added, saying he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin wished to bring the war to a close.
“I think he [Putin] has made a good faith effort to engage. He certainly did at the Alaska summit. But it’s a very complicated conflict.
“I think that we may end up seeing a bilateral meeting. My own opinion is that the president is going to be needed at the table to finish a deal.”
U.S. President Donald Trump met with Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15 and later with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Aug. 18.
In the wake of those summits, Trump said the two leaders would hold a bilateral meeting, which would then be followed by a trilateral meeting including him.
Zelenskyy has said Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Putin, while Russia has said the agenda for such a meeting was not ready.
Last week, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said that Moscow has made “significant concessions” toward reaching a peace deal to end the more than three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
In an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” the vice president said Putin made multiple concessions toward reaching a deal with Kyiv, including one that allows Ukraine to receive security guarantees to ward off future attacks.
Vance said that the Russians have “recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv,” noting it was “a major demand at the beginning.”
“And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” he said.
“Have they made every concession? Of course, they haven’t. We’re making progress.”
The violence between Moscow and Kyiv continued overnight, with a Russian drone attack damaging an energy sector facility in Ukraine’s central Poltava, the region’s governor said on Wednesday.
“This night, the enemy massively attacked the Poltava region,” Governor Volodymyr Kohut said on Telegram. “Falling debris and direct hits were recorded in the Poltava district. An energy sector enterprise was damaged. An administrative building, vehicles, and equipment were damaged. Fires broke out on the territory of the enterprise.”
He added that consumers had temporarily lost power as a result of the attack and that “fortunately, there were no casualties.”
The nighttime aerial assault also shut off power in parts of the northern city of Sumy after Russia struck critical infrastructure facilities, leaving all water utility facilities without power and relying on emergency backups on Wednesday morning, according to a Telegram post from Sumy City Military Administration Chief Serhii Kryvosheienko.
“Restoration efforts are now underway in the Sumy region after Russian drone strikes,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Wednesday discussing the attack. “Nearly a hundred UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] and targeted overnight attacks on our regions, aimed specifically at civilian infrastructure.”
“The Russians continue the war and ignore the world’s calls to stop the killings and destruction,” he added, calling for “new steps” to “increase pressure” on Moscow to “stop the attacks and to ensure real security guarantees.”
The Ukrainian Air Force said it downed 74 out of 95 Shahed drones overnight, and that 21 drones hit nine locations across the country.
Russia, meanwhile, said that its air defenses intercepted and destroyed 26 Ukrainian drones over the country through the night, according to Moscow’s Defense Ministry.
At least seven apartment buildings were damaged in a drone attack on the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, located just more than 60 miles from the Russia–Ukraine border, Russian state news agency TASS reported.