Putin met Trump's envoy for three hours — now 3-way peace talks are penciled in for November

The meeting

Russian President Vladimir Putin met U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff for nearly three hours on Wednesday at the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg, in what Reuters described as Washington's latest push to end Europe's bloodiest conflict since the Second World War. It was the ninth time the two men have met in person, according to the Reuters tally.

Afterward, the Kremlin said Putin had agreed "in principle" to resume three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States — the first round in that format since February, which fell apart before the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov said the new talks would be technical-level, could begin sometime on or after November 10, and might be held in Abu Dhabi, with the agenda focused on security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine once the war ends.

The session opened with a goodwill gesture: Russia announced the release of Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher from Michigan held in Russia for more than four years, whom President Donald Trump had personally asked Putin to free. (The release was covered in Wednesday's earlier reporting; Hubbard was preparing to board a flight to the United States, according to Russian state media.)

The cooler reception

The Kremlin was less upbeat about the leg of the trip that came first: Witkoff's Tuesday talks in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the leaders of Finland and Norway, and European and NATO representatives. Witkoff told Putin those talks had shown "some degree of momentum," according to Reuters, and a U.S. official said Ukraine had brought new ideas and proposals. "These nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us," Ushakov told reporters after the St. Petersburg meeting. While the diplomacy unfolded, the fighting did not pause: Russian drones struck residential and energy sites in Kyiv and Kharkiv on Wednesday, according to the reporting.

The Canadian angle

Canada is one of Ukraine's staunchest backers — home to one of the world's largest Ukrainian diasporas, with sanctions on Russia and military aid to Kyiv in place since 2022. If a talks process actually gets moving, Ottawa's sanctions regime and its multi-year assistance commitments all land back on the table. And with the next U.S. midterms less than two weeks away, the November 10 date the Kremlin floated would put the first talks just days after Americans vote.