United States envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the latest American push to secure a peace deal in Ukraine. The Kremlin meeting, expected in the first half of the day, will be the tenth time Mr Witkoff has met Mr Putin in person.
The two envoys were met off their plane by Kirill Dmitriev, Mr Putin’s special envoy, who accompanied them to central Moscow in wet snow. Their visit follows two days of trilateral peace talks in Abu Dhabi, which ended on Wednesday with the announcement of another large planned prisoner exchange but no public breakthrough on the wider negotiations.
The Abu Dhabi talks were the first face-to-face peace talks brokered by the United States in nine months. Envoys from both sides reported only limited headway in efforts to end a conflict now in its fourth and a half year, and the American delegation has since been trying to shift the discussion towards long-term security guarantees and post-war recovery.
Deadlock over Donbas
Kyiv has firmly rejected Mr Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the whole of the eastern Donbas region in return for peace. With the negotiations stalled over territory, the United States has attempted to redirect them towards security pledges that could reassure Ukraine without settling the land question first.
President Donald Trump has spoken publicly with optimism about the chances of a deal, but meaningful compromises have yet to materialise. The gap between the two sides remains wide: Moscow continues to insist on territorial concessions, while Kyiv says it will not trade land for a ceasefire.
Separately, a senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday that Moscow was prepared to conclude non-aggression pacts with NATO member states as part of a new security framework for Europe. Many European lawmakers have argued against negotiating the continent’s defence arrangements until tangible progress, such as a truce in Ukraine, has been achieved.
The Moscow visit comes at a delicate moment for the American effort. The Abu Dhabi round showed that the two sides can still sit at the same table and agree on humanitarian steps such as prisoner swaps, but it also showed how far apart they remain on the central questions of territory and security. Whether the Kremlin talks move the process forward will become clearer once the envoys report back to Washington.
