US envoy Witkoff to arrive in Russia for talks with Putin
· RTE.ieUS special envoy Steve Witkoff will arrive in Russia's St Petersburg for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who will take part in the meeting with Mr Putin, will meet Mr Witkoff at the airport.
US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will participate virtually, a US official said.
Mr Witkoff is travelling to Russia from Norway, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the Oslo talks as "positive".
"It was positive, nothing unexpected, nothing surprising, and he'll [Witkoff] now, armed with those ideas, be able to go to St Petersburg and share them with the Russian side - and let's see if we can make some progress," Mr Rubio said, speaking in India.
He also said that Washington had no prior knowledge of slowing of the SpaceX satellite communications that Ukraine uses to support battlefield operations.
"The president has nothing to do with the decisions that are made by Starlink and Starshield and by Mr Musk," Mr Rubio said, speaking in Mumbai.
"That's a private company; the president doesn't run that company and can't direct that company to do anything... I'm telling you, there was no foreknowledge."
Separately, Russian drones killed two people near Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv overnight, local officials said.
In Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, a Russian airstrike hit a high-storey apartment building and transport infrastructure, causing fires, Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said on Telegram.
There was also a strike on a university in Kremenchuk in the Poltava region that injured two, local authorities said.