Kushner and Witkoff Head to Moscow to Meet Putin After Ukraine Talks End Without a Breakthrough
Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff will fly to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin after two days of U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi ended without a clear breakthrough, CNN reported.
“Steve and I are going to travel to Moscow tomorrow to meet with President Putin to go over what was discussed today and to try to make more progress on some of the issues that we discussed because we see some openings and some opportunities there,” Kushner told reporters in the UAE capital Wednesday.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the meeting will take place Thursday morning, European Pravda reported, citing his comments to the Russian news agency TASS. The envoys then plan to go to Dublin to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Abu Dhabi round was the first direct meeting of the two delegations in nine months. Both sides agreed to a large prisoner-of-war exchange, but the talks ended with no major breakthrough on ending the nearly five-year-old invasion, the Associated Press reported.
Territory remains the hardest issue, Kushner said, Bloomberg reported. The second day of talks lasted less than two hours.
Russia’s chief negotiator has vowed to reclaim “every inch” of the territory Moscow claims, while Kyiv has rejected a U.S. proposal to redraw the border in the eastern Donbas region, the Kyiv Post reported.
“In some areas, we reached a mutual understanding. In others, we did not. This conversation will, without a doubt, continue,” top Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said, according to CNN.
Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia said Russia arrived with “very strict directives.” “I’m in this process since 2022 and I can fairly say that this was one of the toughest ones,” he said.
Zelensky thanked Washington for organizing the talks and pointed to an “important humanitarian agreement” on a new prisoner swap. “The first step must be ending this war and ensuring Ukraine’s security,” he wrote on Telegram.
Kushner said he and Witkoff would also push to bring European countries into the talks, a format Moscow has resisted. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a G7 meeting in Paris on Tuesday that the goal is to have Europeans “represented at that table directly.”
European capitals have grown uneasy. CNN noted that Trump has announced significant concessions to Moscow in recent weeks, raising concern in Europe that Washington may push a settlement on terms favorable to Russia. Arakhamia said a new round should be set after the Moscow and Dublin meetings, the Kyiv Post reported.
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