U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Kyiv on Sunday to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a day after holding more than three hours of closed-door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The visits are the latest push by the Trump administration to broker an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
A ceasefire is currently in place to allow for the negotiations, though there have continued to be reports of drone attacks from both sides.
Ahead of the Americans’ arrival, Zelenskyy said he had already met with his own negotiating team and that Ukraine was ready for the talks.
“Ukraine has always been and will remain constructive,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “We are interested in bringing the end of the war closer. Peace is needed. Security guarantees are needed. A dignified character of the postwar peace is needed.”
No breakthrough was announced following the Moscow session. Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, described the meeting as “constructive, frank and useful” but gave no specifics on what was decided. A White House official said afterward that the two sides had discussed “substantive plans for next steps,” which are expected to be announced in the coming weeks, and that the U.S. delegation was looking forward to “equally productive meetings” in Ukraine.
The Same Sticking Points
Significant differences between Moscow and Kyiv remain, particularly over territory. Russia has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from portions of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions still under Ukrainian control, a demand Kyiv has rejected. Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014 and home to its Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol, is not considered up for negotiation by Moscow.
Zelenskyy’s reference to “security guarantees” is widely understood to touch on the question of NATO membership for Ukraine, an outcome Moscow has consistently opposed as a condition of any settlement.
This is not the first time the two sides have exchanged optimistic language without a concrete result. A previous face-to-face meeting between Putin and President Trump in Alaska generated similar expectations but produced little in the way of tangible progress.
The talks in Kyiv are taking place as the United States enters the Labor Day weekend. It remains unclear whether the current round of diplomacy will produce more than the last.
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