Witkoff and Kushner Meet Putin in Moscow in Push to Revive Ukraine Peace Talks

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Thursday, 12 November, for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the most senior shuttle diplomacy yet of the American-led effort to end the war in Ukraine.

The pair landed at Vnukovo Airport in the morning and were greeted by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and President Putin’s special representative for investment and international economic cooperation. Their meeting with Mr Putin was scheduled for noon local time, the BBC reported.

After the Kremlin session, the envoys were due to fly to Dublin later the same day to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, carrying the proposals discussed in Moscow to the Ukrainian side.

What the envoys carried from Abu Dhabi

The Moscow visit followed two days of talks in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November, when American, Russian and Ukrainian delegations met under US mediation. It was the first direct contact of its kind since February, and the first round of trilateral talks in nine months.

Those talks produced no ceasefire and no breakthrough on the wider terms of a settlement. They did produce an agreement in principle on a major prisoner exchange — the largest of the war to date, according to Mr Kushner — and discussion of security guarantees for Ukraine and the broader security architecture of Europe.

Announcing the Moscow trip at a news conference in the Emirati capital on Wednesday, Mr Kushner said the envoys saw reason to keep pushing. “Steve and I are going to travel to Moscow tomorrow to meet with President Putin to go over what was discussed today and to try to make more progress on some of the issues that we discussed because we see some openings and some opportunities there,” he said, according to CNN.

The two sides’ own accounts of Abu Dhabi underlined how far apart they remain. Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russia’s delegation, said Moscow’s baseline demands were entirely unchanged. “In some areas, we reached a mutual understanding. In others, we did not. This conversation will, without a doubt, continue,” he said. Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov reported only incremental progress on humanitarian questions, while cautioning that fundamental divergences persisted.

Europe’s place at the table

One question the envoys took to Moscow was whether European governments should be brought into future rounds of talks. Mr Kushner said he and Mr Witkoff would ask Mr Putin to approve bringing European representatives into the discussions, particularly on questions of continental security, and urged Europe to pick a single person to speak for it in the negotiations.

Russia has resisted European participation, citing Europe’s support for Kyiv, according to the BBC. Moscow has also shown no sign of abandoning its demands for sovereign Ukrainian territory or its insistence that Western countries forgo future commitments to defend Kyiv.

The American position, as set out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a G7 meeting earlier in the week, is that future talks should be broadened so European allies secure a permanent seat at the main negotiating table. European delegations were present in Abu Dhabi in parallel, holding separate talks alongside their Ukrainian and American counterparts.

A war in its fifth year

The diplomacy comes as the war approaches its fifth year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi were framed around the post-war security architecture of Europe, and the back-to-back meetings with Mr Putin and Mr Zelenskyy on the same day represent the highest-level shuttle diplomacy of the US-led peace effort so far.

No outcome from the Moscow meeting had been announced in the reporting available at the time of writing, and no further rounds of talks have been detailed. The open questions are whether Mr Putin agrees to European participation in future rounds, whether Russia moves from its territorial and security demands, and what, if anything, the envoys announce after their Dublin meeting with Mr Zelenskyy.