US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday to discuss the results of this week’s US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
After the meeting, Kushner said he and Witkoff would fly to Dublin, Ireland, to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and brief him on the talks. Neither side announced a breakthrough from the Moscow meeting.
The Moscow talks followed two days of negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi, which ended on Wednesday with an agreement on a large prisoner exchange but no visible breakthrough on ending the war, now in its fifth year.
Witkoff and Kushner, who is US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, attended the Abu Dhabi talks. They arrived in Moscow on Thursday morning, where they were met off the plane by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, amid wet snow, before heading to the Kremlin. The talks were the 10th time Witkoff has met Putin in person.
Kushner said one of the goals of the Moscow meeting was to try to get European countries added to the talks. He said both Ukraine and Russia needed clarity on post-conflict security arrangements, and that European countries, the European Union and NATO would have to be involved in those discussions to build consensus on the next steps.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that European representatives could eventually join the peace talks. But he said their current statements “don’t indicate any desire on their part to contribute to movement along the path toward peace.” Moscow has complained that Europe is financing and supplying weapons to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy gave a muted welcome to the outcome of the Abu Dhabi talks, calling the proposed prisoner exchange a positive step. At the same time, he insisted that Ukraine would not give in to demands to hand over territory occupied by Russia in exchange for peace.
Hopes had been low for a major breakthrough. The Abu Dhabi talks were the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the US in nine months. Along with security guarantees for both countries, the main hurdles remain the fate of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory and what role European countries will play in any settlement.
Fighting continued through the talks. Russia said its air defences shot down 71 Ukrainian drones overnight, and said it had struck a drone-making plant in Kyiv and facilities producing missile fuel and drone parts around the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine has not confirmed those claims.
In a separate incident, a Russian serviceman was killed in St Petersburg early on Thursday when his vehicle exploded, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It did not name the victim or say who could be behind the bombing.
