The key facts

  • A secret summer meeting in Finland between Trump's envoys and the Ukrainian delegation was cancelled at the last moment, Ilta-Sanomat reports
  • The outlet attributes the collapse to the escalation of the conflict between the US and Iran
  • On October 20 a meeting took place in Oslo with Witkoff and Zelensky; on October 21 Witkoff held talks with Putin in St. Petersburg

The cancelled meeting in Finland

US President Donald Trump's special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had planned to hold a secret meeting with a Ukrainian delegation in the summer, but it was cancelled at the very last moment. This was reported by the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, whose data is cited by Gazeta.Ru..

What was to be discussed

According to the outlet's journalists, a secret meeting on Ukraine was planned in Finland, to which Trump's envoys were to arrive. The participants were to discuss peace initiatives for resolving the Ukrainian crisis, and these ideas were then expected to be presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Ilta-Sanomat, the talks fell through because of the situation in the Middle East — the escalation of the conflict between the US and Iran.

Context of the October contacts

On October 20, a meeting took place in Oslo involving Steve Witkoff, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, and a number of European leaders. Axios correspondent Barak Ravid reported that Washington, Kyiv, and the European Union had agreed on a unified position on further steps to resolve the conflict and engage with Moscow. The next day, Trump's special envoy flew to St. Petersburg, where he held talks with Putin. Earlier, possible venues for a new round of talks in the Russia–US–Ukraine format had also been named.

Significance of the information

The report of the cancelled summer meeting shows that back-channel contacts between the American envoys and the Ukrainian side were undertaken long before the October round of talks, and that their collapse was due to an external factor — the Middle East crisis — rather than the positions of the participants. For readers, this means that the diplomatic process around the Ukrainian conflict is moving along several tracks simultaneously: behind the public meetings in Oslo and St. Petersburg there were also failed attempts at secret consultations. At the same time, the information is based on a report by a single outlet, and official confirmation of the meeting's details has not yet been provided.