OSLO – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to hold talks with top US envoys in Norway on Tuesday in a bid to get strained relations with Washington “on a more constructive path”, Oslo said.
Televised images from Norwegian public broadcaster NRK showed US top envoy Steve Witkoff’s private jet landing just before noon at Oslo’s Gardermoen airport.
Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said earlier Tuesday that Oslo would host talks between Zelensky, Witkoff and Jared Kushner — the latter taking part remotely — as well as Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
Relations between Kyiv and Washington have soured since President Donald Trump partially lifted sanctions to strike a diesel-supply deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and slammed Zelensky as a warmonger for Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Zelensky has accused the United States of deliberately withholding vital intelligence and delaying military aid, saying on Monday that Ukraine received no early warning of powerful Russian missile strikes that targeted energy facilities in the capital region.
US-led diplomatic efforts to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II have stalled in recent months, as Washington has shifted focus towards the war with Iran.
“Ukraine has requested that US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner join the meetings. I am pleased that they are able to participate,” Norway’s Store said in a statement.
“The aim is to put diplomatic efforts on a more constructive path,” he said.
The talks were due to begin on Tuesday afternoon and continue into the evening, he told reporters.
Ahead of the meeting, Zelensky on Tuesday said he held “substantive” and “constructive” talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which he insisted that the US military satellite system Ukraine uses, Starshield, “needs to be restored” and that ballistic missile interceptors “are needed to protect lives”.
Zelensky told US senators on Monday that “the Pentagon is delaying the delivery of missiles” already paid for by European countries, and that the shipment was waiting for US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s signature.
He said several European countries were ready to transfer Patriot interceptor missiles from their own stockpiles but were still awaiting US approval.
“We want to continue to have open, honest and pragmatic relations” with the US, Zelensky told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Tuesday.
The United States has denied making any changes to intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and Rubio on Tuesday said Washington was not deliberately withholding supplies.
“There’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine,” Rubio said while on a trip to India.
“It’s simply, it’s a balance between our obligations to other partners and frankly our own… requirements for our own facilities as well.”
Trump has also denied ordering a reduction in speeds on the US government-owned and -controlled Starshield network after Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX developed it, said the order could only have come from the White House.
Strained relations
The US leader has accused his counterpart of not trying to resolve the conflict with Russia.
“Zelensky doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Trump said on Monday.
“To be honest, I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”
Trump said he was ready to meet Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in China next month to discuss denuclearisation, adding that talks could also cover the Ukraine war — fuelling fears in Kyiv that it was being sidelined.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed earlier that “the topic of such a hypothetical has indeed been mentioned” when asked about a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that Trump, Putin and Xi could meet.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said that such a meeting would “only encourage Putin to continue this war”.
News outlet Axios reported that Witkoff would travel from Oslo to Russia to meet Putin.
“We hope that it will be possible to arrange a meeting in the very near future, allowing the American negotiators… Mr Witkoff, to brief President Putin on their contacts with both the Ukrainians and the Europeans,” Peskov told reporters Tuesday.
Russian strikes
Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday that Russian strikes killed at least six people around the country, as Moscow targets energy and transport infrastructure with winter approaching.
The attacks came after Zelensky said that Kyiv would resume hitting Russian refineries in the face of unrelenting strikes, more than four-and-a-half years into the war.
