U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Kyiv on September 6 to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, a day after both men held more than three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on a proposal to end the war in Ukraine.
Witkoff described the Kyiv meeting as producing “very meaningful discussions,” and the U.S. side later called the talks “substantive.” Zelensky said afterward that he expects the war to continue and that Ukraine is counting on continued American support heading into winter, signaling no immediate breakthrough despite the diplomatic push.
The Moscow meeting with Putin ended without an announced breakthrough. According to the Kremlin, Putin told Witkoff and Kushner that any settlement required addressing “all root causes of the Ukrainian conflict,” a phrase Russian officials have used to refer to demands that Ukraine accept neutrality, reduce its military and abandon its NATO ambitions. Russia has continued to demand that Ukraine cede territory that Russian forces do not currently control, a demand Kyiv has rejected.
President Donald Trump has defended the renewed diplomatic effort, saying Putin “is not looking to attack NATO territory.” Trump made the remark amid separate developments in Kyiv, including a Russian drone strike on September 5 that hit the headquarters of Ukraine’s SBU security service, targeting the office of its chief.
The Kyiv visit was Witkoff and Kushner’s first joint trip to Ukraine’s capital as part of the current round of shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv. Officials on both the U.S. and Ukrainian sides have signaled interest in follow-up trilateral talks involving Russia, though no date for such a meeting had been set as of this writing.
Sources: CNN · NPR · Al Jazeera
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