US Envoys Witkoff and Kushner Arrive in Kyiv After Moscow Talks With Putin
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were set to arrive in Kyiv on Sunday, September 6, 2026, for their first visit to the Ukrainian capital as part of a renewed push for peace in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to NPR. The visit followed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, September 5, aimed at reviving peace talks during escalating aerial attacks by both sides. U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Witkoff and Kushner were heading abroad to attempt to forge a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Reuters reported. Kushner is Trump's son-in-law.
The Saturday meeting in Moscow between Witkoff, Kushner, and Putin lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without announcements of any breakthroughs. Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov described the talks as constructive, frank, and useful but did not discuss specific outcomes. Ushakov said the Moscow talks were not purely focused on the war in Ukraine, with economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America discussed in considerable detail.
The Kyiv visit by Witkoff and Kushner followed their arrival in Moscow on Saturday to try to revive a stalled push to end Russia's military operation in Ukraine, AP reported. The New York Times reported on September 4 that the envoys were traveling to Moscow and Kyiv that weekend in an effort to revive discussions of a peace agreement. Reuters, citing TASS, reported on September 4 that Witkoff and Kushner would visit Moscow and Kyiv in the next two days.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Witkoff and Kushner would be traveling as part of the United States' strategy in Ukraine and would be attending for part of the talks between Kyiv and Moscow. In remarks to the press, Rubio described Witkoff as one of the United States' very good negotiators on Ukraine. The Kremlin said on June 24, 2026, that it believed contacts with the United States over Ukraine would resume when Witkoff and Kushner became available.
The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner before September 2026 was in January 2026, when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin. Washington's push to end the fighting in Ukraine has lost momentum, with the United States focused for the past six months on the Iran war.
Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other's capitals while the peace talks take place. Despite that agreement, Russia and Ukraine traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said. Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and injured at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, according to Ukraine's State Emergency Service. In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people. A drone damaged an apartment building, injuring seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region of Ukraine.
Ukraine's Air Force said on Sunday that 82 drones out of 108 launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles, were intercepted. In Russia, a man was killed and a woman seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle in the Belgorod border region. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.
The broader context here is that the shuttle diplomacy now underway operates against a backdrop of diminished U.S. attention to the Ukraine file. The six-month focus on the Iran war has meant that the peace process lost momentum even as both sides continued to exchange fire. The overnight attacks, which killed civilians in both Ukraine and Russia, illustrate the fragility of even the narrow agreement to pause strikes on each other's capitals. That the parties continued to trade strikes on front-line regions and border areas even as envoys were in the air underscores the gap between the negotiating track and the battlefield reality.
The inclusion of economic issues and joint projects in the Moscow talks, as described by Ushakov, adds another dimension to the diplomacy. Whether those discussions will complicate or complement the peace track remains an open question for policymakers tracking the process.
