The US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have arrived in Kyiv for a second day of talks on how to end the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, met the pair in Sophia Square, in front of Kyiv’s historic Saint Sophia Cathedral. Zelenskyy greeted Witkoff with a hug, saying: “It’s good to see you, Steve.”
The cathedral is a few hundred metres away from the headquarters of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency, which was hit by a Russian drone on Friday afternoon, marking an escalation in a conflict that has now dragged on for more than four and a half years.
Witkoff and Kushner are meeting Zelenskyy the day after holding three hours of talks in Moscow with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
The US envoys have visited Russia several times, but this is their first visit to Ukraine. The trip is intended to mark an intensification of efforts to end the war in Ukraine, although details of any peace proposal remain unclear.
British, French and German national security advisers were reportedly in Kyiv on Sunday before the arrival of Witkoff and Kushner.
Talks between Russia and Ukraine on ending the war have focused on a 20-point peace plan put forward by Washington and Kyiv in December. But the two sides have failed to reach common ground on several sticking points, including control of territory in east Ukraine.
A White House official said on Saturday that the talks with Moscow “discussed substantive plans for next steps” for ending the war and said an announcement would follow in the coming weeks.
The senior Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described the talks as “extremely frank” and said there was an acknowledgement of the need to address “the root causes of the conflict”.
Moscow and Kyiv pledged to refrain from strikes on each other’s capital cities for three days to ensure the smooth passage of the negotiators. Zelenskyy said on Sunday that the plans for the US envoys to fly into Moscow had been upended by Russian strikes on Kyiv’s two main airports on Friday evening.
Ukrainian airspace has been closed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Other visiting dignitaries have travelled overland by train from neighbouring countries.
Kyiv and the surrounding areas have been hit by a barrage of daily drone strikes for more than a week, the most sustained attack on Ukraine’s capital in months.
The capital is now enjoying a reprieve from strikes and air raid alerts that had become a daily occurrence, but other parts of the country are still being hit. Ukrainian authorities reported on Sunday that at least eight people were killed and 69 injured across Ukraine in the past day.
Ukraine is facing a critical shortage of US-made Patriot interceptor missiles that can shoot down incoming threats. Many of the recent Russian strikes have been by new-model jet-powered drones that can reach speeds of 250mph, making them hard to intercept.
Many Ukrainians are worried about the war dragging on into a fifth year and are anxious about the winter ahead. This week, Zelenskyy’s defence technology adviser, Serhii Beskrestnov, told the Guardian that the government should consider evacuating elderly people from Kyiv as Putin had ordered the Russian military to “prepare and carry out mass strikes” on Ukraine’s energy facilities.
Russia and Ukraine have increased their use of long-range missiles in recent weeks in an effort to sap morale in each other’s countries.
Additional research by Illia Dyadik
