U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Saturday to try to revive a stalled push to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, carrying a proposal they will follow up with an unprecedented first visit to Kyiv on Sunday.
The trip marks the first time either envoy has traveled to the Ukrainian capital, and comes as U.S.-mediated negotiations, paused since Washington’s war with Iran began in February, show tentative signs of restarting. President Trump told reporters in Washington on Friday that Witkoff and Kushner were “great negotiators” bringing “a proposal to end the war,” adding there was “a good chance we will do it.”
As the envoys arrived, the Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had ordered a halt to strikes on Kyiv for three days starting Saturday night, a pause spokesman Dmitry Peskov linked directly to “the Americans’ contacts in Kyiv.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier Saturday that Russian missiles had struck two airports near Kyiv, including Boryspil, suggesting the attacks were a response to preparations for the American delegation’s visit.
Russian officials struck a more cautious tone ahead of the talks. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Washington needed to account for what he called shifting battlefield realities, pointing to Russian gains around industrial towns in the eastern Donetsk region. Zelensky, for his part, said Ukraine wanted the negotiations to be as “constructive and substantive as possible,” calling for realistic options to end the fighting.
The visit follows a meeting between CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Russian intelligence chiefs roughly ten days ago, an outreach U.S. officials said was intended to gauge whether Moscow’s security services could persuade Putin to re-engage diplomatically. It also comes as Ukraine faces a worsening shortage of air-defense interceptors, which Zelensky has said leaves the country increasingly exposed to Russian ballistic missile strikes.
