Car bomb kills Russian general as Trump envoy visits Kremlin

Donald Trump's envoy met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin yesterday for high-stakes peace talks hours after a senior Russian military official was killed in a car explosion near Moscow.

- Pjotr Sauer

The US president played up Steve Witkoff's visit - his fourth to Russia in recent months - claiming a peace deal was within reach. "The next few days are going to be very important," Trump told reporters on Thursday. "Meetings are taking place right now. I think we're going to make a deal. I think we're getting very close."

But no apparent breakthrough was reached. The Russian president's senior aide Yuri Ushakov, who was present at the talks, said only that the discussions were "constructive and quite useful", and noted that the two sides had "narrowed differences" on ending the war in Ukraine.

Ushakov added that the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine had also been discussed. Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that Witkoff had left Moscow carrying a message for Trump.

There was no immediate comment from Witkoff on the outcome of the meeting.

At the start of the talks, the Kremlin published a short clip showing Putin and Witkoff shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries in the Kremlin before sitting down on opposite sides of a white oval table to start their meeting behind closed doors.