US Envoys Witkoff and Kushner Meet Putin in Moscow as Peace Push Intensifies

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived at the Kremlin on Thursday for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, opening a fresh push toward a peace deal in Ukraine despite what Washington has described as a deep lack of trust between Moscow and Kyiv. The meeting marks the tenth in-person encounter between Witkoff and Putin during a conflict that has now run longer than the Soviet Union's campaign against Nazi Germany in World War II.

The Kremlin talks follow two days of US-led trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the first direct US-mediated discussions between Russia and Ukraine in nine months. Both sides reported some progress and agreed to a major prisoner-of-war exchange expected to take place in the coming weeks, but no breakthrough was announced on the wider issues dividing them.

US officials said significant differences remain, particularly over territory. Kyiv has rejected Putin's demand that Ukraine surrender the whole of the eastern Donbas region as the price of peace, a goal Russian forces are still pursuing on the battlefield in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. Moscow has not made major territorial gains this year, though it has heavily targeted Ukrainian infrastructure, while Ukraine has repeatedly struck Russian oil refineries with drones, causing fuel shortages that have resurfaced in some regions this week, according to local officials.

After the Moscow session, Witkoff and Kushner are expected to fly to Dublin for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Zelenskiy said this week that he hoped a result could be reached by the end of the year, but that much depended on how the United States approached Moscow. President Donald Trump, who once claimed he could end the war within 24 hours, has tasked his son-in-law Kushner and Witkoff with reviving the peace effort, saying last week that the conflict was close to being settled in a "big beautiful agreement" — a prediction he has made repeatedly without it materializing.

Putin has shown no sign of moderating his territorial demands, which include a buffer zone in parts of Ukraine that Russia has not formally claimed. The outcome of the Kremlin meeting and the subsequent talks in Dublin will be closely watched for any indication that the parties are moving toward a negotiated settlement.