US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, carrying the latest push for a peace deal in Ukraine after two days of trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi. The Moscow peace talks are the next step in a diplomatic sprint that has produced a prisoner exchange but no wider breakthrough yet.
The Kremlin talks, expected in the first half of the day, will be the tenth time Witkoff has met Putin in person, according to Reuters. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, met Kushner and Witkoff off their plane amid wet snow and accompanied them to central Moscow. The visit follows two days of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi that finished on Wednesday with news of another planned major prisoner exchange but no public breakthrough in the wider negotiations.
Abu Dhabi Produces Prisoner Swap
The Abu Dhabi talks were the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the United States in nine months, and the first time the two countries had negotiated in that format in nine months. Kushner said the largest humanitarian prisoner exchange of the Russia-Ukraine conflict was agreed during the talks, although the numbers involved have not been publicly confirmed. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, also confirmed the agreement.
Kushner said one of the main goals of the Moscow visit is to see whether European nations can be included in the negotiation format. Before the talks, Kushner and Witkoff met representatives from the European Union, NATO, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and France. The US team is pushing for a deal that lays out a post-war scenario for both countries, including security guarantees for Ukraine and a broader security architecture for Europe that takes Russian concerns into account.
Next Stop: Dublin to Meet Zelensky
After Moscow, the two envoys plan to travel to Dublin to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to reports. Zelensky said after an earlier meeting with the envoys that the war would continue into winter. Russia has continued striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure even as talks resume, hitting six power substations this week, according to Ukrainian officials.
The war is now in its fourth and a half year, and the flurry of diplomacy comes as both sides face mounting pressure to find an end to the fighting. Whether Putin accepts a European role in the talks may shape the next round. For background on the Abu Dhabi round, see our report on the Abu Dhabi peace talks entering their second day and Russia hitting six Ukraine power substations as talks resumed.
