Trump Envoy Steve Witkoff Is in Russia, the Kremlin Says

President Trump’s senior aide on Russia negotiations, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Russia on Friday, the Kremlin said, as American and Russian officials are trying to reignite talks over the war in Ukraine that have appeared stalled in recent weeks.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters that Mr. Witkoff had flown into Russia but refused to say whether the envoy would meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Kremlin later said that Mr. Putin would be working in St. Petersburg on Friday. A plane that Mr. Witkoff often uses landed in St. Petersburg on Friday morning, traveling from Florida, according to the tracking service Flightradar24.

In St. Petersburg, Mr. Witkoff held a meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, Mr. Putin’s special envoy for investment and international economic affairs, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency. The agency published a video of Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Dmitriev leaving an upscale hotel in the city center.

If Mr. Witkoff also has a meeting with Mr. Putin, it would be their third since Moscow and Washington began working to reset the relationship and find ways to end the war in Ukraine.

The news of Mr. Witkoff’s trip to Russia was first reported by Axios.

Mr. Witkoff recently became the first senior American official to travel to Moscow to meet with Mr. Putin since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. The Biden administration cut off contact with Mr. Putin and accused him of committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

Delegated by Mr. Trump as his trusted envoy, Mr. Witkoff has seemed to pursue a different approach. After his first meeting in the Kremlin, Mr. Witkoff said that he had tried to develop “a friendship, a relationship” with Mr. Putin.