Witkoff flatters Putin as talks restart; Putin bombs Kyiv the same night
Witkoff spent ~3 hours with Putin (euronews says St.
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Politics brief, Thursday, October 22. 1 story from the politics desk, separate from the tech feed.
First, Witkoff flatters Putin as talks restart; Putin bombs Kyiv the same night. Witkoff spent ~3 hours with Putin (euronews says St. Petersburg; some reports say the Kremlin, minor discrepancy, flag it) and produced the line that Putin "is a humanitarian also, sir", drawing bipartisan fire, Sen.
Full written brief and sources are on the politics desk of TriHard Gaming Network.
01 Witkoff flatters Putin as talks restart; Putin bombs Kyiv the same night
What happened Witkoff spent ~3 hours with Putin (euronews says St. Petersburg; some reports say the Kremlin — minor discrepancy, flag it) and produced the line that Putin "is a humanitarian also, sir" — drawing bipartisan fire, Sen. Tillis telling him to ask the families of kidnapped Ukrainian children. The Kremlin says it's "in principle" ready for trilateral talks around Nov 10 — after the US midterms — possibly Abu Dhabi (Ushakov via TASS; Daily Brief corroborates). Trump claims the parties are "the closest we've been"; Russia freed US citizen Stephen Hubbard, which Trump cited as the payoff for waiving the September sanctions law and signing a US–Russia diesel purchase deal — both directly tied to the gasoline-price problem Iran has inflicted on his midterm map. Hours after the diplomacy headline: 21 ballistic missiles at Kyiv in three waves, 1 killed and 22–24 wounded in Kyiv (prosecutor's office), 7 killed across Ukraine per euronews — different scopes, don't conflate. Zelenskyy: the strike shows Russia's attitude "has not changed"; he's pitching a front-line freeze as a first step and got a reported Oct 20 Oslo deal to restore intel flows — while story 3 shows Starshield limits persist. Analysis — who benefits: the timing is symmetrical and cynical. Putin gets sanctions relief and post-election negotiating leverage now; Trump gets a "peace outcome" window after Nov 3 without pre-election escalation; neither pays before the vote. The strikes-while-talking pattern is consistent with the Foreign Ministry's stated position that negotiations are not a ceasefire reason — treat "closest we've been" as negotiating posture, not fact.