US envoy Steve Witkoff arrives in St Petersburg for talks on Ukraine with Vladimir Putin

‌US special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived ​on Wednesday in Russia’s second-largest city of St Petersburg, ​where he is to meet Russian president ‌Vladimir Putin ‌for ​talks aimed at resolving the ⁠war ​in Ukraine, ​two sources familiar with the ‌visit told Reuters.“I ⁠don’t ​know whether ​any agreement ‌will be reached ​today, but the talks ⁠on the ⁠conflict ​in Ukraine are, of course, the main focus of today’s discussions,” Russian ‌news agency ⁠Interfax quoted Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov ‌as saying.Witkoff’s meeting with Putin in ⁠the former ⁠Russian ​imperial capital is to come a day after he met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Oslo. US secretary of state Marco ‌Rubio said ⁠Witkoff’s meeting with Zelenskiy was positive and ‌that Witkoff would share ​the results with Russia. READ MORERubio also reiterated that Washington had not pulled back Kyiv’s ability to access ​SpaceX’s Starlink, a satellite system vital to Ukraine’s war effort, contradicting reports that the US government had a role in slowing the service for the Ukrainian military.Zelenskiy travelled to Oslo to meet Witkoff on Tuesday, as Ukraine seeks ​to repair ties with the US amid tensions over US military support, intelligence sharing and Ukraine’s access to the ⁠military version of Starlink.Rubio told ‌reporters ‌in ​Mumbai during a visit to India that nothing surprising came out of Witkoff’s talks with the Ukrainian leader.“He will now, armed with those ideas, be ⁠able to go to St Petersburg ​and share them with the Russian side, ​and let’s see if we can make some progress,” he said.On Starlink, he said: “What I ‌can tell you with certainty is the ​president of the United States, nor anyone in our system, ever requested that any ⁠changes to that system be ⁠made.”“We cannot direct ​a private company as to the decisions they make or do not make,” he added.“I’m not aware that we knew about this decision beforehand ... but it’s irrelevant. The bottom line is that it is governed by a private commercial contract as to the how their stuff can be used ... And so we’ll continue to engage on the matter.”Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, last ‌week said that because the ⁠systems were owned and controlled by the US government, any limits on speed or usage were decided by the US military or the US president.The ‌US under president Donald Trump has largely stopped providing weapons directly to Ukraine but lets European countries buy US ​weaponry on Kyiv’s behalf under a programme known as Prioritised ​Ukraine Requirements List.It has also provided intelligence and technology that Europe cannot match. – Reuters