US Envoy Heads To Moscow As White House Deadline Looms For Cease-Fire Progress

By RFE/RL August 06, 2025

US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to meet senior officials in Moscow on August 6 as rumors swirl over what message he will deliver just two days before a deadline from the White House for Russia to make progress on a cease-fire with Ukraine.

While US President Donald Trump has threatened tariffs on Russia and secondary sanctions on countries still buying Russian oil, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not expected to halt the war he launched in February 2022.

The secondary tariffs would likely target China and India, the two largest buyers of Russian oil.

But as Witkoff reportedly took off for Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "we have spoken with and proposed to Russia quiet in the skies, no missile and drone attacks and specifically no attacks on civilian infrastructure or on the energy sector."

Trump, who has increasingly voiced frustration with Putin, warned last week "there'll be sanctions, but they seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions."

"They're wily characters and they're pretty good at avoiding sanctions, so we'll see what happens."

He also said he will be "substantially raising" tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil.

When asked on August 3 what Witkoff's message would be to Moscow and if there was anything Russia could do to avoid the sanctions, the president replied: "Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed."

For its part, the Kremlin has said little about Witkoff's visit.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on August 4 that "we are always happy to see Mr. Witkoff in Moscow.... We consider such contact important, substantial and helpful."

Peskov was quoted early on August 6 Moscow time as saying that improving relations between Russia and the United States will take time.

"There is, of course, inertia in this process," Peskov told TASS, referring to the prolonged absence of a meeting between Putin and Trump. "It takes time for efforts to bring bilateral relations back onto a normal track."

Trump has been pressuring Putin to agree to a cease-fire and an end to the war, now in its fourth year.

He announced on July 14 that Putin had 50 days to end the war or Russia would face severe tariffs targeting its oil and other exports, but he later moved the deadline up to August 8.

The decision corresponded with a deadly week for civilians in Ukraine, including a July 31 attack on Kyiv involving more than 300 drones that killed at least 31 people. Ukrainian forces also increased strikes on Russian infrastructure.

Some analysts said threatening China over its Russian oil purchases could even backfire on Trump given it was hard to imagine that Beijing would halt the purchases, while secondary sanctions could drive oil prices higher.

Alexander Morozov, a political analyst and research fellow at Charles University in Prague, said that despite the risks, Washington wants to make a decision before Putin travels at the end of the month to meet Chinese Prime Minister Xi, "so that this decision is already known to China before Putin arrives in Beijing."

"In addition to this, it is important for Washington to approach the APEC summit on October 31 with agreements already reached with China regarding trade, and preferably with agreements regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war," he added.

The escalating attacks and the approaching deadline for a deal also come as Trump said that he had deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the "appropriate regions."

Trump said on August 1 that he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines "closer to Russia" because of "highly provocative statements" by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-envoy-moscow-witkoff- deadline-putin-cease-fire/33495350.html

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US Envoy Heads To Moscow As White House Deadline Looms For Cease-Fire Progress