Kushner and Witkoff Brief Putin in the Kremlin After Abu Dhabi Talks Yield Only a Prisoner Swap
Trump's envoys want Moscow's blessing for European negotiators to join the peace effort, a step Russia has resisted, as the war nears its fifth year.
President Donald Trump's envoys met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Thursday, seeking fresh momentum for peace efforts after two days of U.S.-mediated negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations ended without a major breakthrough.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is also Trump's son-in-law, brokered the talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. They were the first direct discussions between representatives of Moscow and Kyiv in nine months, after the push for peace had stalled. The two days of talks, which ended Wednesday, produced one concrete result: an agreement to swap a large number of prisoners. The exact figure has yet to be announced.
Kushner and Witkoff flew straight from Abu Dhabi to Moscow and briefed Putin in a meeting that lasted about two hours. They are scheduled to travel next to Dublin, Ireland, for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as the conflict stretches toward its five-year mark.
Kushner said one goal of the Putin meeting was to win the Russian leader's blessing for European representatives to take part in the negotiations, which are examining the continent's broader security arrangements. The United States and Zelenskyy both want Europe to appoint a single person to negotiate with Moscow.
Moscow does not want European countries in the direct talks. It complains that they are financing and supplying Ukraine's military effort. European governments, for their part, are worried about Russia's conduct and its wider intentions on the continent, and many see bringing Moscow into discussions about postwar European security as an unwelcome concession to Putin.
Putin has described NATO's eastward expansion as a main security threat to Russia and has demanded that the trans-Atlantic alliance's troops be pulled back from Russia's borders. That demand sits at the center of the dispute over what a settlement would look like, and it is one reason the Europeans want a seat at the table.
The Abu Dhabi round was the first time Russian and Ukrainian officials had sat down directly since the winter, and the prisoner exchange, while significant for the families involved, leaves the core questions of territory, security guarantees and sanctions unresolved. With Kushner and Witkoff heading to Dublin to see Zelenskyy, the envoys are now trying to carry whatever they heard in Moscow to Kyiv, and to find a format that Russia, Ukraine and Europe will all accept.
The talks in the Emirates and the Kremlin meeting that followed both took place under heavy diplomatic pressure from Washington, which has been trying for months to turn a stalled war into a negotiated settlement. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv has publicly signaled that it is ready to give ground on the central issues.
