President Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Ukraine on Sunday, their first trip to the country and the second stop on a diplomatic tour aimed at reviving efforts to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.
Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner came straight from Moscow, where they spoke on Saturday with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, for several hours. They arrived in Kyiv, the capital, by train, alighting on a platform bearing a sign that read, “PEACE EXPRESS,” and then were taken by motorcade to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader alluded to the landmark nature of the visit as he waited to greet the men on a windy Sophia Square, where hundreds of placards showing the faces of fallen soldiers were on display. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled to Moscow several times, had never before visited Kyiv, despite multiple official invitations.
“We have been waiting for Steve and Jared, Witkoff and Kushner, for a long time,” he told reporters before greeting the two with hugs upon their arrival.
The men did not make any comments before entering the landmark St. Sophia Cathedral, just across from where a Russian drone recently slammed into the headquarters of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service.
About an hour later, Mr. Zelensky posted a simple message on his social media channels: “Negotiations have begun.”
The meetings come at a dangerous moment in the nearly five-year conflict. Russia and Ukraine have both been escalating, waging an intensifying air war at least in part to try to gain the upper hand in settlement talks.
That was reflected in the delicate, weekslong discussions around the American envoys’ travel. The United States insisted that Ukraine temporarily cease attacks on Moscow and that Russia temporarily halt attacks on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, while the men were in those cities, according to officials familiar with the diplomatic effort.
Mr. Zelensky publicly committed to doing so on Friday evening, hours before Mr. Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Mr. Kushner, his son-in-law and frequent negotiator, landed in Moscow. While they were there, the Kremlin announced that Russia would pause strikes on Kyiv for three days.
Few expect a breakthrough from the U.S. envoys’ trip, which has been billed as the first step toward reviving talks mediated by the Trump administration. Those are expected to resume late this month — days after Russia’s parliamentary election and weeks before U.S. midterm elections, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, who greeted the envoys at the train station on Sunday, recently told The New York Times.
Mr. Trump returned to office last year pledging to end the war in Ukraine swiftly. He enlisted Mr. Witkoff and later Mr. Kushner to assist with negotiations, which have unfolded in fits and starts.
By February, Mr. Witkoff and Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had whittled a 20-point peace plan to two key unresolved points: management of a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant and control of territory that Ukraine still holds in the eastern Donbas region. Then the United States and Israel attacked Iran, shifting the White House’s attention away from resolving the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner were traveling with a proposal to end the war, but he did not provide further details.
It was unclear whether it was a new proposal or if the men would be pushing to close the gap on the remaining issues.
Few in Ukraine expect a speedy resolution. The Kremlin has given no indication that it is ready to stop the fighting, and Ukrainian officials say they expect Russian forces to try to inflict as much pain on Ukraine as possible during the winter in hopes of pummeling Kyiv into submission at the negotiating table.
The Russian military’s gains on the battlefield have slowed in recent months. Yet the Kremlin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters that Mr. Putin, in his meeting with the Americans, emphasized that Russia’s forces were advancing and would achieve their goals.
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