U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and numerous officials in Kyiv on Sunday as the diplomats sought to restart stalled peace talks with Russia.
Mr. Zelenskyy confirmed that he had met with the peace envoys and had a “good conversation” after several rounds of talks.
“And today we will continue to talk. The main thing is to achieve a worthy, reliable, and lasting peace for Ukraine. We are directing all efforts toward this,” Mr. Zelenskyy wrote on X.
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The three officials met in central Kyiv on Sunday afternoon, less than a day after Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner sat down for more than three hours with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Also present at the Kyiv meeting were senior Ukrainian officials and national security advisers from Germany, France and Britain.
Details of the Kyiv talks were not revealed, but Mr. Zelenskyy wrote in a post before the meeting that Ukraine’s “proposals are ready” and confirmed that he had held extensive discussions with his staff.
President Trump, who teased the talks last week, implied Friday that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff would bring a fresh U.S. peace proposal to Kyiv.
It was unclear whether the Russia talks had any impact on a prospective U.S. peace proposal.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described the talks with Mr. Putin on Saturday as “constructive, frank and useful,” though he offered no further details and did not confirm whether there would be a follow-up meeting.
Before the meeting, Mr. Putin ordered a 72-hour pause in strikes on Kyiv ahead of Mr. Trump’s envoys’ visit to the city.
Mr. Zelenskyy, in turn, announced that he would halt all airstrikes on Russia and urged Moscow to do the same.
However, the war continued elsewhere in Ukraine over the weekend, with both sides trading strikes across the border region. A Russian strike outside Kyiv killed at least one Ukrainian and wounded 10 more, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
The Moscow meeting was the first official diplomatic discussion between the White House’s chief negotiators and Mr. Putin in months, the first since January, after the launch of the war in Iran put peace talks on Ukraine on an unofficial hold.
Prior rounds of talks between the U.S. and Russia, along with mediated negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, have failed to produce a deal to end the war, which began when Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in early 2022.
Russia has long insisted that Ukraine cannot, as part of any settlement, be allowed to join NATO, citing serious security concerns. It has also rejected the deployment of Western-backed peacekeeping troops to the region after the war.
Perhaps most important, Moscow has resisted giving up parts of Ukraine that its forces have spent enormous blood and treasure to capture. Ukraine has flatly ruled out ceding any territory it held before the war to Russia.
Still, some reports indicate that Russia’s losses in the war are starting to affect battlefield readiness.
Nearly five years of fighting have heavily depleted Moscow’s manpower reserves and stockpiles of critical battlefield materials.
A report released by Ukraine’s general staff last week found that Russia had lost almost 1.5 million soldiers, either killed or wounded, on the battlefield since the war began.
“No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II,” according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Kremlin has also lost 12,325 tanks, 25,272 armored personnel carriers, 49,152 artillery systems, 2,088 multiple launch rocket launchers and 1,604 air defense systems. Russian losses also include 441 aircraft, 355 helicopters, 35 warships and two submarines.
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
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