US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held “encouraging” talks in Kiev on Sunday in their first official visit to Ukraine as part of a renewed push to end more than four-and-a-half years of a large-scale Russian invasion.
The Americans’ trip follows a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, during which both sides escalated their air attacks. Washington’s efforts to end the fighting have lost momentum, with the Trump administration focusing over the past six months on the Iran war.
Russia has recently used fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the frequent wailing of air raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kiev. Troops are struggling to make progress along the 1,250-kilometre front line.
After two rounds of discussions with US officials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the goal was a “just and equitable peace” that would ensure “there is never a chance of resumption of aggression against Ukraine.”
He also thanked the American negotiators who traveled by train for coming to Kiev, their first time in Ukraine. Zelensky said the next round of talks later Sunday would include national security advisers from Britain, France and Germany.
“We have had very meaningful, substantive and important discussions, and we are very encouraged,” Witkoff said.
Kushner said President Donald Trump believes it is important “not just to figure out how to end the current war,” but how to create the conditions for lasting peace.
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A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said much of the discussion centered on “how to get through the winter and what can be done before then.”
No breakthroughs in Moscow talks
Saturday’s meeting in Moscow lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without announcing any major developments. Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, described the talks as constructive, frank and useful, but did not discuss specific outcomes.
While Moscow presented its “comprehensive assessment” of the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, Ushakov said the talks were not entirely focused on the war in Ukraine.
“Economic issues and potentially large and mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in great detail,” he said.
The last known visit of Wytkov and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, to Moscow was in January when they held talks with Putin in the Kremlin.
Russia and Ukraine continue to exchange fire
Putin and Zelensky agreed to stop strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks were held. Officials said the two exchanged gunfire overnight and into Sunday.
Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and injured at least 10 others overnight Sunday, the Ukrainian state emergency service said.
In Zaporizhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and injured three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, wounding seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region.
The Ukrainian Air Force announced on Sunday that it had intercepted 82 of the 108 drones launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles.
In Russia, a man was killed and a woman was seriously injured when a Ukrainian drone hit a car, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday that its air defenses shot down 258 Ukrainian drones overnight over 14 Russian regions, the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, and the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Conflicting hopes on the ground
In Kiev, dozens gathered Sunday for a nationwide minute of silence at 9 a.m. in honor of fallen Ukrainian soldiers, a daily ritual held in cities across the country.
Natalia Lippi, 67, whose son Victor was killed in December 2022, was among those in attendance. Despite her poor health, she traveled from city to city to participate, and said she hoped the talks in Moscow and Kiev would finally bring the war to an end.
“I hope that these steps and these meetings will definitely produce results, because there has been a lot of bloodshed and a lot of deaths here, so we have to stop all of this,” Libby told the Associated Press.
Not everyone shared her hope for the talks. Oleksandr Pastukhov, a 27-year-old video editor who joined the celebration, expressed skepticism that the envoys’ visit would change anything.
“We have already seen delegations like this come here before,” he said. “We saw this so-called three-day ceasefire, which ended after just a few hours, and now we are supposed to naively believe that two people will come and change something.”
At Sunday prayers, Pope Leo XIV renewed his appeal for peace in Ukraine, and said he hoped the negotiations would yield results.
He told the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican: “I hope that the efforts made in recent days to resume negotiations will bear tangible results and make room for diplomacy.”
___ Associated Press journalists Volodymyr Yurchuk and Yevgeny Ocherityany in Kiev, Ukraine, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.
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