Trump resumes diplomatic offensive over Ukraine/Witkoff and Kushner to meet Putin and Zelensky, but the sides remain far from an agreement

The US administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine have entered a new phase. President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will visit Russia and Ukraine this weekend, carrying a new proposal to end the more than four-year-old conflict.

The first meeting is expected to take place today in Moscow, where Witkoff and Kushner will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Sunday, the two American negotiators will travel to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“They have a proposal with them to end the war,” Trump said when asked about his envoys’ mission. President Putin has also recently expressed cautious optimism about the possibility of reaching peace. During an international economic forum, he said that an agreement “is possible.”

Witkoff and Kushner are leading the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts to broker a peace agreement. However, major disagreements continue to exist between Moscow and Kyiv.

The trip to Ukraine will mark the first visit by the two American negotiators as part of these talks, while they have visited Russia several times. On the ground, the situation remains tense ahead of the meetings. Zelensky announced that a Russian drone struck the office of Oleksandr Poklad, head of Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, in Kyiv.

Poklad was not reported to have been injured. According to Zelensky, he asked the head of the SBU to respond to the attack “appropriately.” Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said that a Russian attack on the city of Kamianske, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killed four people and injured five others.