The Kremlin has denied that Vladimir Putin rejected a peace deal brokered by the United States, but even Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s emissaries, could draw no other conclusion after five hours of talks with the Russian president.
Mr Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy, and Mr Kushner, his son-in-law and an informal architect of the Gaza peace plan, reflect their president’s desperation to do a deal. Yet even after these stooges talked to Putin from 7pm until midnight, all that a Kremlin spokesperson would say was that the meeting was “useful, constructive and meaningful”, but that “we are no closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine, and there is much work to do”.
