U.S. peace envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff reported fresh momentum in peace negotiations after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Sunday, as the Trump administration intensified its efforts to end Russia’s four-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine.
Kushner and Witkoff had arrived from Moscow, where they spent three hours in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, though they did not appear to achieve a decisive breakthrough in the conflict.
Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s envoy, stated that they had encountered “new ideas” in Moscow, which they did not disclose, and expressed hope that a fresh round of U.S.-brokered talks between Ukraine and Russia would be announced soon.
Zelensky posted video of him receiving US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at Kiev on X with captions, "We began talks."
Zelenskiy praised his talks with Witkoff and Kushner as very substantive and said Ukraine was ready to engage in trilateral negotiations. He noted that they also discussed supplying air defence systems and energy support to Ukraine ahead of winter, in expectation that Russia would again strike the country’s power infrastructure with bomb attacks.
Earlier U.S.-brokered peace negotiations promoted by Trump, who ran on a pledge to swiftly end the conflict, have produced limited outcomes. On Friday, he indicated that the United States had a new proposal, but he provided no further details.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described Saturday's meeting as "highly useful", while a White House official told Reuters that next steps would be announced in the coming weeks.
"We made a lot of progress in Moscow," Witkoff told reporters in Kyiv on Sunday, adding that he was "very encouraged" by his conversations with the Ukrainian team.
The Ukrainian president, who considers Washington crucial to any peace agreement, has stated that there is a limited window to achieve peace before the United States turns its attention to the next presidential election in 2028.
U.S. envoys conducted several hours of talks with Ukrainian officials, and in the final hour they were joined by the national security advisers of Britain, France and Germany, who were also in Kyiv.
The U.S.-Ukrainian negotiations were scheduled to resume on Sunday evening. During a pause in the talks, Zelenskiy said that officials had discussed potential security and economic guarantees for Kyiv, along with a post-war "prosperity plan."
Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, have made multiple trips to Moscow as peace envoys. However, Sunday marked their first visit to Kyiv as official U.S. negotiators.
Ukraine’s leaders had been requesting this visit for a long time, and on the streets of Kyiv—heavily bombarded in recent weeks—some residents expressed cautious hope.
In previous talks, the sides have remained far apart on key issues, including the future of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. Russia has demanded Ukraine's withdrawal from a belt of towns that it still controls there, but Kyiv has refused, reasoning that it can still hold on.
"The question of Donbas... I believe, is the question of this war," Zelenskiy told reporters on Sunday.
For Ukraine, hard security guarantees from its European allies and the U.S. are crucial to deterring Russia from invading again. Although he said the issue had been discussed, Zelenskiy did not detail if progress was made.