The special envoy of US President Donald Trump, Steve Whitcoff, arrived in Moscow today, where he is scheduled to hold meetings with Russian leaders, Russian state news agency TASS reports.

Mr. Vitkov was “received by the president’s special representative, Kirill Dmitriev,” the agency clarified, two days before the ultimatum issued by US President Donald Trump to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to end the 2022 war against Ukraine expires.

Steve Whitcoff may move to impose sweeping economic sanctions on Russia and countries that buy oil and gas from it in particular.

Peskov: Improving Russia-US relations “takes time”

At the same time, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov believes that improving relations between Moscow and Washington will take time

In statements to the state news agency TASS broadcast today he said:

“There is, of course, inertia in this process,” Peskov said, commenting that there has been no meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump.

“Time is needed for efforts to get bilateral relations back on a normal path,” the Kremlin spokesman added.