KYIV — Making their first visit to Ukraine’s war weary capital, President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, said on Sunday that they were hopeful of reviving trilateral negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s war.
Witkoff, Trump’s longtime personal friend, and Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, traveled to Kyiv from Moscow where they met for three hours with Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking to revive ceasefire talks, which largely stalled after the start of the U.S. war against Iran in late February.
The advance of Russia’s forces in Ukraine has also mostly stalled, and the battlefield has been transformed into a high-tech war of attrition with movement near the front lines made exceedingly dangerous by swarms of drones on each side.
“One thing Steve and I really thought would be productive is to go back to the trilateral format, which we were able to do about six months ago, and we spoke with both parties, and so hopefully we’ll have progress on that very soon,” Kushner said at a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following Sunday’s meetings.
U.S. mediators had met directly with Ukrainian and Russian negotiators in Abu Dhabi and most recently in Geneva in mid-February, days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion and less than two weeks before the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
“When we did the trilateral, actually Steve and I enjoyed it much more because we had everyone talking with each other instead of us having to argue the Russian position to the Ukrainians,” Kushner said.
To accommodate the envoys’ visit on Sunday, Putin announced a three-day suspension of airstrikes, matching a proposal by Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky.
The pause gave Kyiv a reprieve from what has become near-nightly ballistic missile and drone strikes and prompted Zelensky to joke acidly that their presence was more effective than Ukraine’s air defenses.
“We’ve worked better today than the Patriot systems,” Zelensky said, referring to the American-made systems that have been less effective because of a severe shortage of interceptor missiles. “Thank you for giving the opportunity for our people to live a bit,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian officials had long bristled that Trump’s emissaries had never visited Ukraine despite making repeated trips to Moscow. Saturday’s visit to the Kremlin was Witkoff’s eighth to the Russian capital since Trump returned to the White House last year.
At the news conference Zelensky stressed a need for continued support for Ukraine by the United States and European nations, for air defenses, and especially “in case the war will continue throughout the winter, which for now, it looks like it will.”
Putin so far has shown no sign of backing away from Russia’s maximalist demands, including Ukraine’s surrender of its entire Donbas region, which Russia has claimed, illegally, to have annexed despite occupying only part of it.
Zelensky referenced the difficult issue of Russia’s territorial demands as well as his insistence that any peace accord include security guarantees that would protect Ukraine from a future Russian invasion or attack. He also thanked Kushner and Witkoff for their efforts.
“It’s important that there was a meeting between the president of Russia and the American team,” Zelensky said.
After Saturday’s meeting, Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, told reporters the talks were “substantive, constructive and extremely candid.”
Ushakov said Witkoff and Kushner “formulated a number of considerations on possible paths to a settlement” and promised to “draw on the observations they received from Putin” during the talks in Kyiv.
The push to renew peace talks comes just over a week after CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unexpected trip to Moscow, where he told his Russian counterpart that ramping up the war against Ukraine would backfire. Ratcliffe did not meet with Putin during his visit, the Kremlin said.
In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump told reporters that Witkoff and Kushner were “bringing with them a proposal to end the war” but did not detail the plans.
Witkoff told journalists that the Americans were working toward a diplomatic resolution to the war. “That’s always what President Trump seeks,” he said.
Putin and Russian officials typically refer to Zelensky and his government as the “Kyiv regime,” a reflection of the Russian leader’s repeated assertions that Ukraine is not a legitimate country.
In an attempt at levity, David Arakhamia, the leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party in the Ukrainian Parliament, appeared at Sunday’s news conference wearing a black T-shirt with “Kyiv Regime” printed on it in bold white Ukrainian letters.
Identical shirts were presented to Witkoff and Kushner as gifts.
Walsh reported from London.
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