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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are set to hold a call about the Russia-Ukraine war in the coming week, a US official said, as Washington seeks to broker a ceasefire deal.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff on Sunday told CNN he had a “positive” meeting with Putin and that the Russian and Ukrainian parties “are today a lot closer” in negotiations.

“I expect that there’ll be a call with both presidents this week and we’re also continuing to engage and have conversation with the Ukrainians,” he said. 

The comments come after the US and its G7 partners on Friday warned Moscow that they could expand sanctions and use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, as Trump seeks to win over Putin to his ceasefire proposal. The joint statement followed a week in which Kyiv signed up to the 30-day truce but Moscow signalled reluctance to do so immediately.

Witkoff told CNN he had witnessed improvements in ceasefire negotiations. The sides were previously “miles apart,” he said.

Following talks in Saudi Arabia led by US national security adviser Mike Waltz and US secretary of state Marco Rubio as well as Witkoff’s “equally positive” meeting with Putin, “we’ve narrowed the differences between them and now we’re sitting at the table,” he added.

The White House and Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The envoy told CBS that negotiations were complex, involving multiple angles and a large swath of territory, including a “main area of confrontation” in the Kursk region, a nuclear reactor supplying electricity to Ukraine and access to ports. 

“There’s so many elements to the implementation of a ceasefire here,” Witkoff said, adding that it “involves how to get people to not be fighting with each other over a 2,000 kilometre border”.

He also seemed to dismiss a statement made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who argued that Russia “does not seem to be sincerely seeking peace”.

Witkoff declined to comment on Macron’s remarks, but added: “I think it’s unfortunate when people make those sort of assessments, and they don’t have, necessarily, first-hand knowledge . . . I saw a constructive effort over a long period of time to discuss the specifics of what’s going on in the field”.

Asked when he thinks there will be a deal, Witkoff cited Trump, who has said it would take weeks.

“I don’t disagree with him,” the envoy told CNN. 

Voice of America staff were locked out of their offices on Saturday—unable to complete planned reporting—after President Donald Trump signed an executive order gutting the government-run news agency that the White House has referred to as “radical propaganda.”

VOA was founded in 1942 in part to counter Nazi propaganda.

The move impacts all full-time staffers at the VOA and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martíore, and is poised to have a devastating effect on practically all operations under the United States Agency for Global Media—the parent entity of VOA and the department targeted by Trump’s Friday evening order.

According to the agency, which is fully funded by federal dollars, broadcasters and their sister networks reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week, “often in some of the world’s most restrictive media environments.”

“I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” VOA director Michael Abramowitz wrote in a LinkedIn post. He shared that his entire staff of 1,300 journalists, producers, and assistants had been put on administrative leave, including himself. “Even if the agency survives in some form, the actions being taken today by the Administration will severely damage Voice of America’s ability to foster a world that is safe and free and in doing so is failing to protect U.S. interests,” he said.

A statement released by the White House following the executive order details news coverage by VOA as justification for the defunding, including an article defining white privilege after the murder of George Floyd, a story about whether Russia perpetuated allegations against Hunter Biden to benefit Trump, and a segment on LGBT migrants.

“It’s a relic of the past,” Ric Grenell, Trump’s special envoy for special missions, wrote on X in February. “We don’t need government-paid media outlets.” Trump’s billionaire donor and Department of Government Efficiency advisor Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform: “Yes, shut them down … Nobody listens to them anymore.”

The order, entitled “Continuing the Reduction Of The Federal Bureaucracy,” called for multiple other departments to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law,” including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Minority Business Development Agency.

In December, Trump announced that Republican Kari Lake, a former news anchor who ran twice for office in Arizona on a MAGA platform and lost both times, was his pick to serve as director of Voice of America—though that didn’t happen. A couple of months later, Trump named her a senior adviser to the USAGM.

On Saturday morning, Lake took to X, shared a link to the executive order, and told employees to check their emails—where they would find news of being terminated.