Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Saturday with yet another proposal from President Donald Trump to end the war in Ukraine, and left having received rather more hospitality than any substantial assurance. Their reception, orchestrated down to the choice of car, suggested a Kremlin eager to project intimacy with Washington.
The envoys were met at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport by Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, who welcomed them as "peacemakers." Soon after their arrival, they dined at an upscale restaurant near the Kremlin and were driven to their meetings in a Russian-made Aurus limousine rather than an embassy vehicle, a small but pointed departure from protocol. It was their first trip to Moscow since January, and it followed a visit days earlier by CIA director John Ratcliffe, who had pressed Russian officials to bring the war to a close.
Putin gave the pair more than three hours behind closed doors at the Senate Palace, followed by a private dinner. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described the exchange as constructive and conducted with unusual candour. Putin himself said he felt comfortable working with the envoys and asked them to pass on his regards to Trump. As a gesture tied to their onward journey, he ordered a 72-hour pause on strikes against Kyiv, from midnight Saturday. He was careful to add that the pause covered only the capital and not the wider war, which continued as before.
Beneath the warmth, Russia's position has not shifted. Ushakov and spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated that Ukraine must withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk and cede four claimed provinces before any ceasefire can be discussed, terms Kyiv has already rejected. Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov argued that Washington needed to reckon with realities on the ground that he said were moving against Ukraine, while Ushakov pointed to Russian advances in the east as grounds for confidence in eventually securing Moscow's aims by other means.
The talks were not confined to the battlefield. Ushakov disclosed that the session had also touched on economic matters and the possibility of joint Russian-American projects, a sign that Moscow sees the peace process as an opening for broader normalisation with Washington, war or no war. Putin, meanwhile, held to the position that any settlement must first be worked out directly between Russia and Ukraine, with American mediation playing a secondary role.
Kyiv's mood is rather less optimistic. Ukraine is running low on air defence interceptors, a shortage starkly illustrated by a drone strike on the SBU headquarters in the capital. Just before the American delegation arrived in Moscow, Russian strikes hit Kyiv and Boryspil airports. President Volodymyr Zelensky called the timing deliberate, a message aimed at the American team as it prepared to fly into Ukrainian airspace. He promised to make Russian skies increasingly hazardous through long range strikes of his own, even as he pledged safe passage for the diplomatic mission. In a matching gesture, he agreed to halt strikes on Moscow until Monday.
Zelensky says he is ready for a substantive conversation with the envoys, though his red lines remain where they have always been. Kyiv will not concede territory and will not give up its NATO ambitions, whatever pressure Washington might apply.
Witkoff and Kushner are due in Kyiv today, their first visit to the Ukrainian capital in this round of diplomacy. With Ukrainian airspace closed and its airports recently under fire, even the logistics of getting there are complicated. Once in the city, they are expected to relay Putin's assessments directly to Zelensky and to lay out what the White House is calling a concrete proposal, with further details promised in the coming weeks.
The renewed push comes after months in which American attention drifted towards Iran, and it arrives with the same unresolved contradiction that has stalled every previous attempt. Russia wants territorial concessions and a neutral Ukraine. Ukraine wants its sovereignty and security guarantees intact. Rapport in Moscow, however genuine, does little to close that gap in Kyiv.
