Trump revives his Russia-Ukraine peace bid. But has anything really changed?

President Donald Trump is sending two of his closest envoys, son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, to Moscow and then Kyiv this weekend. The pair are due to meet officials in the Russian capital before travelling to Ukraine on Sunday, carrying what Trump has described as a “concrete proposal” to end the war. Both men have visited Moscow repeatedly to see President Vladimir Putin, but this will be their first official trip to Kyiv, a detail that has not gone unnoticed in either capital.

The mission is an attempt to revive a peace process that collapsed entirely earlier this year. Trump's administration had pushed hard through 2025 for a settlement involving territorial concessions, security guarantees and postwar reconstruction, only for the talks to fall apart by early 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky has welcomed the renewed effort as proof that Washington remains engaged, and has announced a pause in Ukrainian drone strikes for the duration of the envoys' time in Russia, urging Putin to match it with a halt to Russian air raids.

The timing is delicate. Both countries are absorbing the costs of an aerial war that has intensified through the year. Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian refineries and energy infrastructure have caused fuel shortages across Russia and recent attacks on oil depots in Sochi have disrupted flights over Russian airspace. Ukraine, meanwhile, is running short of air defence interceptors, leaving Kyiv exposed to a punishing barrage of drones and missiles. A Russian strike on the headquarters of Ukraine's SBU intelligence service in central Kyiv was among a wave of attacks that have killed at least 53 people in the region since late August.

Trump has framed the obstacle to peace in curiously personal terms. He has spoken of "a good chance" that his negotiators will make progress, and has suggested the real problem lies not in territory or troop numbers but in the relationship between the two leaders themselves, telling reporters that Putin and Zelensky "truly hate each other." That reading of the conflict may not be entirely correct, but it has not stopped Trump from pursuing a wider rapprochement with Moscow, including a recent invitation for Russia to attend a G20 finance ministers meeting, a move that drew sharp objections from European governments.

Putin, meanwhile, shows no sign of softening. He remarked at an economic forum that "there are chances" for peace, but insisted that Kyiv and Moscow settle matters between themselves, without external mediation shaping the outcome. His conditions have not moved: Ukraine must cede territory currently under Russian control, abandon any ambition of joining NATO and shrink its armed forces substantially. Russia holds roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory and has given no indication that it intends to relinquish any of it, despite the economic strain the war continues to impose at home.

Kyiv is approaching the talks warily. Zelensky has said Ukraine wants the negotiations to be as constructive as possible, in search of realistic ways to end the fighting, but Ukrainian officials remain deeply concerned that Washington could pressure them into accepting terms that amount to capitulation. Both Kyiv and its European partners regard Putin's territorial demands as unacceptable, and Zelensky has spoken of his fear of being manoeuvred into a settlement that permanently surrenders a significant part of the country in exchange for an end to the violence.

Given the distance between the two sides, a quick resolution looks improbable. The envoys' visit may inject fresh momentum into the process, but the core demands of Moscow and the survival concerns of Kyiv remain difficult to reconcile. Ukrainian officials are sceptical that conditions for a workable agreement will exist before next spring. The likelier course, in their view, is a harder winter, with Russia expected to use the cold months to intensify strikes on Ukraine's power grid, calculating that a population without heat or electricity will prove more willing to accept concessions it has so far resisted.