Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have ended in Moscow, and Witkoff said progress was made toward restarting direct negotiations on the war in Ukraine, with European representatives set to join the next round.
"I think progress was made. I think it was made earlier today," Witkoff told CNN just before departing Moscow. "People didn't think that we were going to restart trilateral. We've restarted it. We've set a new meeting." Witkoff also confirmed that European representatives would join the next talks about the Ukraine conflict, a step Russia has previously resisted.
The U.S. envoys are now expected to travel to Dublin, where they will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is attending the European Political Community summit there, and brief him on the Moscow meeting. Zelenskyy said on Thursday that the envoys would discuss with him the results of the negotiations of the past few days.
The trips follow two days of talks in Abu Dhabi between Russian, Ukrainian and American negotiators, the first direct discussions in nine months, which ended on Wednesday with agreement on a large-scale exchange of prisoners but no breakthrough on ending the war. Kushner said one goal of the Kremlin meeting was to secure Putin's blessing for European participation in the negotiations, and that Washington and Kyiv want European countries to nominate a single representative to negotiate with Moscow. Zelenskyy has also warned of recurring disruptions to Starshield, the military-grade version of Elon Musk's Starlink service that is critical to Ukraine's military operations.
