Trump administration envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have described held meetings in Kyiv on Sunday with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "substantive," with Witkoff saying he was "very encouraged."
The talks took place just a day after lengthy conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that produced no announced breakthrough about a potential end to the war.
Jared Kushner, speaking at a press conference in the Ukrainian capital directly after the discussions with Zelenskyy, did not divulge many details but said he and his fellow envoy had "learned a lot from the trip."
There will be further talks later Sunday alongside European security leaders, said Zelenskyy, who insisted before meeting the U.S. envoys that any agreement would need to include security guarantees and a "dignified post-war peace."
President Trump had suggested the two men were bringing new proposals to the talks, but Zelenskyy has shown little desire for the territorial concessions Moscow says are non-negotiable. That impasse has stalled prior rounds of U.S.-brokered diplomacy.
Witkoff and Kushner's Moscow meetings, held behind closed doors at the Kremlin, lasted more than three hours on Saturday. Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov later characterized the talks to reporters as constructive and useful, though he did not offer specifics about what, if anything, had been agreed.
Ushakov said the conversation ranged beyond the battlefield, touching on potential joint economic ventures between Russia and the United States.
The trip was the first to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner since January, and it followed a long period of time in which the pair's attention — and much of the administration's diplomatic bandwidth — was consumed by the separate conflict involving Iran.
That lull in American attention has coincided with a Kremlin that looks increasingly emboldened, even as U.S. officials worry the war in Ukraine is on the verge of escalating further.
Attacks on Black Sea shipping routes by both sides have also stoked fears of renewed global grain shortages. And then added to that is growing concern among NATO members over suspected Russian sabotage and cyberattacks in Europe, including a failed drone incursion at a German airport that officials there have linked to Moscow.
A recent visit to Moscow by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, for talks with his Russian intelligence counterparts, suggested Ukraine may have recently made a broader diplomatic recalculation. Little about Ratcliffe's meeting has been made public.
Publicly, Putin has continued to insist Russian forces are making battlefield gains and will achieve Moscow's war aims, leaving unclear how much room the Kremlin sees for compromise.
With front lines that have remained largely frozen, both country's militaries have leaned harder on air power to punish the other side. Ukrainian drones have frequently targeted Russian energy and logistics sites, contributing to fuel shortages inside Russia.
Moscow has said it will seriously damage Ukraine's power grid again this winter — a threat made more credible given Kyiv's dwindling stock of U.S.-supplied Patriot interceptors.
Against such a backdrop, President Zelenskyy had vowed in a video address to keep Russian airspace clear so that the American delegation could travel safely in and out of Moscow. He said he hoped the visit would prove substantive.
Putin, in turn, ordered a 72-hour pause on airstrikes against Kyiv to cover the second leg of the envoys' trip, a reciprocal gesture that meant both capitals could enjoy a brief respite from the bombardments that have battered infrastructure — some of it civilian — all summer.
That reprieve didn't extend elsewhere though: Ukraine's State Emergency Service said Russian strikes overnight killed one person and injured at least ten others across several regions, including a fatal drone strike in Zaporizhzhia and a building hit in Khmelnytskyi.
Ukraine's air force said it shot down 82 of 108 Russian drones launched overnight, plus six missiles.
Russia reported one death from a Ukrainian drone strike in the Belgorod border region, and said Ukrainian drones had also hit oil facilities near Rostov-on-Don.
NPR's Joanna Kakissis in Kyiv and Charles Maynes in Moscow contributed to this report.
