In Moscow, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said that Witkoff and Kushner brought new ideas for a settlement. According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Americans about the advance of the Russian army, said that the goals of the war would be achieved, and stressed the need to eliminate the “root causes of the conflict”.
The White House said that the talks discussed plans for further actions, which will be announced in the coming weeks.
In Kyiv, talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took place in three rounds and in different formats, and at one stage Europeans joined them. A significant part of the conversation was devoted to preparations for the winter campaign: Ukraine is counting on ammunition for air defense systems, support for the energy grid, and American LNG as part of the “winter package”.
According to the British newspaper Financial Times, Witkoff and Kushner’s new ideas were updated versions of earlier documents, adjusted to reflect circumstances that changed since February, when negotiations under U.S. auspices stalled with the start of U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Sources for the publication described these proposals as an attempt to bring the positions closer again, but without any noticeable progress.
The main dispute remained the same: Putin demands the transfer of the unconquered part of Donbas, while Zelensky rejects this demand and says that the Donbas issue is a question of the war as a whole. Sources for the American publication Axios claim that Trump’s envoys want to achieve a breakthrough before winter sets in.
Publicly, Witkoff said he hopes to announce trilateral talks soon, and Kushner said that Donald Trump seeks not only to stop the war, but also to create conditions for a lasting peace. The immediate practical result of the trip was a three-day halt to strikes on Kyiv and Moscow, agreed to by both sides and set to remain in effect on Monday as well; Zelensky meanwhile said that Witkoff and Kushner “worked better than Patriot systems” and urged them to visit more often.
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