Special envoys of President Donald Trump held a four-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Thursday evening, discussing a U.S. plan to end the war in Ukraine. The talks took place on the eve of a new phase of American mediation—three-way consultations involving Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Abu Dhabi. According to sources, Washington is close to reaching agreement on a peace plan with Kyiv, but has yet to make meaningful progress in persuading Putin to accept it, even though he has not rejected the proposals outright. Control over territories in eastern Ukraine is expected to be the central issue in Abu Dhabi.
The U.S. delegation included White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and White House official Josh Gruenbaum. They arrived in Moscow from Davos shortly after Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that the Americans briefed the Russian president on talks with the Ukrainian side; Greenland and Trump’s Peace Council were also discussed. According to Ushakov, “the talks were substantive, constructive, and very frank.” He stressed that without resolving the territorial issue—Russia’s demand that Ukraine hand over the entire Donbas region under agreements that, he said, Trump and Putin reached at a summit in August last year—“there are no prospects for a long-term settlement.”
Witkoff and Kushner then traveled from Moscow to Abu Dhabi to take part in the three-way talks; according to a Ukrainian source, they will be joined by U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll. Zelensky is sending chief negotiator Rustem Umerov, Presidential Office head Andriy Yermak, diplomatic adviser Serhiy Kyslytsya, and Chief of the General Staff Andriy Hnatov. The Kremlin said the Russian side would be represented by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, along with a group led by military intelligence chief Admiral Igor Kostyukov.