Donald Trump’s special envoy, businessman Steve Witkoff, and the US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, landed in Moscow at noon this Saturday. White House negotiators will visit Russia and Ukraine this weekend to try to revive peace talks that have been in a “deep pause,” using the Kremlin’s words, since the beginning of the year.
Read more Intercepted 56 migrants arriving in four dinghies to Mallorca, Cabrera, and Formentera
The US president announced that his envoys will bring “a proposal to end the war.” Moscow, which emphasizes that it will not give up on its goals, has been more cautious after a year and a half of negotiations that have reached no conclusion. “More will be known when [the talks] take place,” said Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, this Friday.
Witkoff and Kushner have visited Moscow several times in the last year and a half, but their trip to Kiev would be their first visit to the Ukrainian capital since Trump came to power. According to several sources from the Kyiv Independent newspaper, their presence in Kiev on Sunday has been uncertain after Witkoff “began to worry” about the effect of that meeting on Putin’s opinion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly praised Trump’s efforts to revive negotiations with a new proposal. “It is important that the United States continues to participate actively,” the president stated.
Saturday’s meeting was preceded by the CIA chief John Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow two weeks earlier. From that visit, only half-truths and interested leaks have emerged from both governments. According to the Kremlin, Ratcliffe only met with the heads of Russian intelligence services. Independent Russian press claims that Putin refused to receive the CIA chief upon hearing that he was going to demand progress towards peace with Ukraine.
Russia has escalated its attacks against Ukraine in recent months, and Putin does not hesitate to continue his offensive to make Kiev capitulate. It has been an especially bloody summer for civilians. Additionally, this Friday, Russian forces bombed the headquarters of the Ukrainian intelligence service [SBU], in the heart of the capital, on the eve of Witkoff’s meeting with Putin. The bombing was an unprecedented attack because for the first time since 2022, one side has targeted a top official, in this case the head of the SBU, Oleksandr Poklad.
Read more Mali imposes its physicality and surprises Spain: 82-73
The latest rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine under US mediation date back to February, days before the war unleashed by the United States and Israel against Iran. The last meeting was described as “tense” by the Russians, who demanded, and still demand, the handover of the entire Ukrainian Donbas region as a precondition for a truce and peace negotiations.
The dialogue has been suspended since then. The Kremlin spokesman stated in June that Witkoff and Kushner, also negotiators in the Iran conflict, were “busy with other matters at the moment.”
Witkoff, a businessman and friend of Trump, is not a career diplomat, and the Kremlin has found in his inexperience a way to distance Washington from Ukraine and Europe. In Russia, he is not considered a high-level negotiator, even less so Trump’s son-in-law. Moscow has used the bait of promises of future business that so far are smoke, such as the construction of a tunnel in the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska, concessions in the Arctic, and the delivery of Ukrainian “rare earths” to Washington, which were never heard of again.
The businessman last met with Putin in January. Negotiations had cooled after the bilateral summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska in August 2025. Washington never announced any agreement nor signed any document, but since then the Russian leader has demanded the fulfillment of the supposed promises made by the American at that meeting. This is what Russian propaganda calls “the spirit of Anchorage.”
Read more Tadej Pogacar will not race again for the rest of the year after the crash he suffered in La Vuelta
