US envoys, Zelenskyy joined by European allies in Kyiv meeting

Volodymyr Verbianyi and Olesia Safronova, Bloomberg News on Sep 6, 2026

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump’s envoys in Kyiv, a day after Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held talks with Moscow with President Vladimir Putin in pursuit of a way to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The trio, along with Ukraine’s negotiating team, are now meeting with top national security officials from the U.K., Germany and France, who also traveled to Kyiv for Sunday’s talks. Their attendance hadn’t been previously announced.

Kushner and Witkoff, who’ve made several trips to Moscow, are in Ukraine for the first time. Their visit has been shadowed by skepticism that Washington’s renewed peace outreach can end Russia’s four-and-half year old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We all want to end the war, and we are on the same page here,” Zelenskyy said in brief remarks to reporters between the two meetings. “Every such meeting gets us closer to peace.”

He’s expected to speak to the media later on Sunday along with the U.S. envoys. Witkoff said the talks have been “substantial.”

Trump’s diplomatic envoys were earlier greeted by Zelenskyy at the historic St. Sophia’s Cathedral in central Kyiv after arriving in the capital by train. Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service, posted a video of the pair disembarking after their rail journey.

The visit follows the U.S. officials’ more than three hours of talks in Moscow on Saturday that a Kremlin aide called “highly useful.” Putin opened the meeting by describing the situation in Ukraine as “not a simple one.” People familiar with the thinking in Kyiv said Ukraine is pessimistic about meaningful progress resulting from the Witkoff-Kushner visit.

Zelenskyy earlier gathered his negotiating team, including Davyd Arakhamia, Serhii Kyslytsia, Rustem Umerov and Kyrylo Budanov, ahead of the U.S. envoys’ arrival.

“We are ready for the conversation. Ukraine has always been and will remain constructive,” Zelenskyy said on X. “Security guarantees are needed. A dignified character of the postwar peace is needed. Our proposals are ready.”

Trump on Friday said his envoys were “bringing with them a proposal to end the war,” though he didn’t offer any details. Trump pledged that he could quickly engineer an end to the conflict upon returning to the White House in 2025, but the longest war in Europe since World War II has proven tough to resolve.

Putin’s meeting with Witkoff and Kushner was “substantive, constructive, extremely frank and trusting,” Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said in comments distributed by Russian media. “Our president reaffirmed his readiness to continue working jointly with the Americans to seek political and diplomatic solutions.”

They also discussed economic matters and potential Russian-U.S. projects “in considerable detail,” Ushakov said. A White House official said the two sides discussed substantive plans for next steps, which will be announced in coming weeks.

Ukraine had expected the pair to visit Kyiv in April. That trip was repeatedly delayed as the White House’s attention became consumed by the U.S. war in Iran.

The most recent round of talks brokered by the U.S. took place in February. Little progress was seen as Putin insisted Ukraine must surrender the remainder of its eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal to end the war.

Ukraine has repeatedly rejected the demand to hand over a fortress belt of cities in that region, which Russia’s forces have failed to capture in fighting dating back to 2014.

While Putin ordered his troops to pause airstrikes on Kyiv as the two envoys prepared to visit the Ukrainian capital, air-raid sirens sounded on and off in Kyiv on Saturday afternoon. The two sides continued to exchange drone fire overnight, including a strike on a major oil refinery deep within Russia, although Moscow and Kyiv were spared.

Multiple previous trips to Moscow by Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff, a real estate developer who’s become a key figure in U.S. diplomatic efforts from Israel to Karachi to Moscow, failed to yield progress. The Kremlin signaled no intention after Saturday’s talks to back away from its military goals in Ukraine.

Putin is ready to stop the war only on his own terms, and Moscow’s demands are getting tougher because it believes it has the military edge over Ukraine, according to people close to the Kremlin, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

“The Russian side pointed to what it described as the Russian army’s tangible successes in advancing in the combat zone, and expressed confidence that the stated objectives would be achieved,” Ushakov said.

As far back as December, Zelenskyy said a peace plan was “90% agreed,” though talks have barely moved forward since then. Ukraine is pushing for allies to ensure that any security guarantees are sufficient to deter future Russian attacks.

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