Trump's special envoy Whitkoff: conflict in Ukraine provoked

US President Donald Trump 's special representative for the Middle East Steve Whitkoff said that the Ukrainian crisis was provoked. He told about this on February 23 on the air of the TV channel CNN.

"The conflict should not have happened. It was provoked. And it was not necessarily provoked by Russia," Whitkoff said.

He also noted that the draft Istanbul agreements of 2022 could be taken as a basis for resolving the conflict in Ukraine. As Trump's special envoy noted, the day of signing a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia will be a "wonderful day." He also admitted that after the agreements are reached, American companies will be able to return to Russia.

Earlier, on February 23, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that new talks between Russia and the United States will take place at the end of next week. The diplomat noted that Moscow expects real progress from them. The meeting will be held at the level of heads of departments of foreign policy agencies.

Thefirst stage of talks between the Russian and US delegations took place on February 18 in Riyadh. After the meeting, the US State Department said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had agreed to appoint high-level negotiating teams to start work on the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict.