By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, plans a visit to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, a person briefed on the plans said on Monday.
Witkoff, who is officially Trump’s Middle East envoy, has played a growing role in efforts to bring about an end to the three-year-old Ukraine war.
The person, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Bloomberg News report that Witkoff would be going to Moscow for talks with Putin but had no further details.
Trump has expressed a desire to meet Putin and, since taking office in January, has pursued an effort to reverse the icy relations with Russia of the previous Biden administration.
Witkoff met Putin in Moscow last month and brought back American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who had been sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison after being detained for holding medically prescribed marijuana.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading a delegation to Saudi Arabia for talks on Tuesday with Ukrainian officials about the war. U.S. officials planned to use the meeting in part to determine whether Ukraine is willing to make material concessions to Russia to end the war, two U.S. officials said.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jasper Ward; Editing by Costas Pitas and Howard Goller)
