Trump envoys begin Russia outreach after Ukraine breakthrough

Trump administration officials are reaching out to their Russian counterparts as the White House says the ball is in Moscow’s court to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

National security adviser Mike Waltz spoke with his Russian counterpart on Wednesday “in a pursuit of ending this war and striking a peace deal with Russia and with Ukraine,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News.

Leavitt also told reporters at the White House that Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy for Middle East affairs, will travel to Moscow later this week in an attempt to broker an agreement.

Those updates came after CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin spoke over the phone on Tuesday.

The outreach between the Trump administration and Moscow comes on the heels of a meeting in Saudi Arabia between U.S. officials and Ukrainian officials that ended with the White House restoring military aid and intelligence sharing to Kyiv and Ukraine expressing “readiness” to accept a 30-day ceasefire proposal.

The talks came less than two weeks after a contentious Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky late last month. That meeting ended abruptly after Trump said Zelensky was not “ready for peace.”

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that it was not incumbent on Russia to accept a ceasefire.

“Hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia,” Trump said. “And if we do, I think that would be 80 percent of the way to getting this horrible bloodbath ended.”

Asked if there was anything he could do to pressure Russia to accept the agreement, Trump said there was, but that he hoped it would not be necessary.