US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held "encouraging" talks in Kyiv on Sunday during their first official visit to Ukraine, but made no breakthrough toward ending Russia's war in the country. The pair arrived by train from Poland after holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow a day earlier, when Putin declared a three-day ceasefire to ensure their safety.
Despite the renewed diplomatic push, Moscow and Kyiv remain divided over key issues, particularly territorial concessions. Kushner acknowledged the challenge, saying the US was working "behind the scenes" to create conditions for a possible deal. "It's a very, very hard problem, but we're going to try," he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held three rounds of talks with the US envoys, the final one joined by national security advisers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Zelenskyy said the talks focused on military aid, including Patriot missile systems and other weapons Ukraine will need in the coming months, with Kyiv seeking "serious volumes" of US support backed by European partners. "If the war drags on until winter — and that is how things currently look — we will need a 'winter package'," he said.
Momentum by US President Donald Trump to end the four-and-a-half-year-old conflict has stalled in recent months after talks with Putin at the Kremlin in January failed to produce a result. Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov described the Moscow talks as constructive, frank, and useful but did not discuss specific outcomes. Negotiators have previously struggled to bring both sides together on key issues, including the future of the industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The war has escalated in recent months, with Putin seeking the complete conquest of Donbas and Russian drones targeting the Ukrainian capital. Kyrylo Budanov, Zelenskyy's chief of staff, told the New York Times last weekend that he did not expect the fighting to end before spring 2027, and predicted further Russian strategic air strikes on Ukraine this winter.
