The meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Special Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff are expected to hold on January 22 will be their seventh meeting.
They have already held five conversations at the Kremlin, and the Russian leader once hosted the US envoy in St. Petersburg. In addition, Putin and Witkoff met during the Russian-US talks in Alaska, where the envoy was part of US President Donald Trump’s delegation.
The first time Witkoff visited Moscow was on February 11, 2025. He was the first American politician to travel to Russia after Trump’s return to the White House. His goal was to bring back Marc Fogel, a US national convicted in Russia on drug smuggling charges and pardoned by the Russian president. Witkoff later told CBS News that while in Moscow, he had held a meeting with Putin. However, the Kremlin did not comment on that.
Witkoff came to Moscow for the second time on March 13 and was received by the Russian head of state. The Kremlin press service did not disclose the topics of their conversation. Witkoff remarked that the talks, which had lasted three to four hours, were positive. Putin gave Witkoff a portrait of Donald Trump to deliver to the US president as a gift, depicting the latter after the assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.
