The U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner completed a high-level diplomatic tour on Monday that first took them to Moscow and then to Kiev, leaving on the table the possibility of resuming trilateral talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine to end the war.
On Saturday, the two negotiators met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Grand Palace of the Kremlin for over three hours, in a session that Moscow described as "very useful," although there were no announcements of concrete progress.
The next day, they traveled to the Ukrainian capital, where they met with President Volodimir Zelenski to update him on the meeting with Putin. It was the first visit of both envoys to Kiev since the conflict began.
In addition to Zelensky, Witkoff and Kushner met in Kyiv with delegates from Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
Witkoff summarized the outcome of the tour in a post on the social network X: «Substantial progress was made, including the willingness to schedule new trilateral talks».
A senior Ukrainian official told the agency AFP that the envoys presented "new and more effective" proposals to end the war, although Zelenski warned that the fighting will likely continue through the northern winter.
The Ukrainian leader posted on Facebook that he met with his team of negotiators and that they are making progress in their preparations: "We are coordinating our next steps. We are preparing for upcoming meetings and communications."
From Moscow, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, did not rule out a new format for dialogue. «We also do not dismiss the resumption of a tripartite format, but it is still too early to discuss the location and specific dates», he stated to reporters and expressed gratitude for the work of the U.S. negotiators, noting that «every effort represents a step towards peace».
The tour takes place at a time of diplomatic stagnation. The last formal round of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev occurred in February 2026 in Geneva, organized by Washington, and ended without agreement on territorial issues. The main obstacle remains Donbas: Russia demands to retain the eastern Ukrainian region as a condition for any peace agreement, something that Ukraine rejects.
Diplomatic efforts from Washington had lost momentum in the preceding months, partly because the Trump administration diverted its attention to the war with Iran. During that time, Putin rejected Zelenski's proposal for direct negotiation in a third neutral country and ordered the continuation of the offensive.
The war, which began with the large-scale Russian invasion in 2022, has resulted in the deaths of at least 15,000 civilians according to the United Nations, which warns that the actual number is likely much higher. The total toll, including military casualties, amounts to hundreds of thousands of people.
This Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, expressed his alarm over the use of fully autonomous drones in the conflict and called for an urgent ban on weapons capable of killing without human intervention.
The possibility of resuming the trilateral dialogue comes weeks after Zelenski met with Trump at the White House to discuss the reactivation of the diplomatic process, although for now neither Moscow nor Washington has set a date or location for a potential new round of talks.
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