Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky ordered a three-day halt to airstrikes against each other's capitals this Saturday, coinciding with the arrival in Moscow of President Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who aim to revive the stalled peace negotiations regarding Ukraine.
According to a report from Associated Press (AP), the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, confirmed that Putin "ordered that starting at midnight today and for three days there would be no attacks on Kiev," linking the measure directly to "the preparations for the meetings of the (American) envoys in Kiev."
Zelensky responded with a parallel announcement on his social media: "From this moment on, we are ready to respect a ceasefire in the airstrikes against the cities involved in the negotiation process."
The Ukrainian leader stated that the commitment is in effect "from now until the end of Saturday, as well as during Sunday and Monday," a period during which Ukraine will refrain from attacking Moscow, with the expectation of reciprocity from Russia regarding Kiev.
The plane of the envoys landed at 12:52 local time at Vnúkovo Airport in Moscow, having entered Russian airspace from Finland, and both were welcomed by Kiril Dmítriev, the Kremlin envoy for economic cooperation with the United States.
The meeting took place at the Grand Palace of the Kremlin, where Putin opened the gathering by greeting his counterparts in English —“Welcome. Nice to meet you”— and acknowledged that “the situation we are going to discuss today is, of course, not easy.”
Hours before Putin announced the truce, Zelenski had denounced deliberate Russian bombings against the airports of Kyiv and Boryspil, labeling them as a "reaction to the discussions and preparations regarding the possibility of the U.S. side using a plane to travel to Ukraine."
The pause opens up the possibility for the plane of Witkoff and Kushner to land directly at one of those airports, which is significant given that Ukrainian airspace has been closed to civil aviation since February 24, 2022.
Zelenski promised firmness and "one hundred percent" effectiveness in the talks with Trump's envoys, who will travel to Kiev on Sunday for the first visit by representatives of the current U.S. government to the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of Trump's second term.
Negotiations between Moscow and Kiev have been stalled since February 2026, when the military operation by the United States and Israel against Iran began. Both Russia and Washington believe that the agreements reached at the Trump-Putin summit in August 2025 in Alaska have lost their relevance, where Moscow reportedly offered to freeze the southern front in exchange for Ukraine conceding the Donbas.
The mission this weekend comes less than two weeks after the surprise visit of the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow, interpreted as a preparatory step for this diplomatic relaunch driven by Washington.
Trump declared the day before that his envoys "bring a proposal to end the war," while Putin, for his part, stated that the U.S. president "will not stop trying to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict," although he acknowledged that he could face "a difficult road ahead."
Putin has currently rejected both a prolonged ceasefire and a tripartite summit with the United States and Ukraine, unless it is to sign a definitive peace agreement, highlighting the narrow margin within which U.S. mediators are operating.
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