U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have arrived in Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their visit follows two days of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, where representatives of the United States, Russia and Ukraine explored ways to end the war.
On November 12, they were met at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport by Kirill Dmitriev, a senior Russian official involved in talks with Washington.
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For Witkoff, this is his tenth visit to Russia for talks with Putin as part of efforts to reach a peace agreement. He and Kushner are among the chief U.S. negotiators seeking to end the war, an issue President Donald Trump has made a foreign policy priority since his return to the White House in 2025.
After their talks with Putin, the two envoys are expected to travel to Dublin to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He arrived earlier in Ireland for a meeting with European leaders.
The November 10 and 11 meetings in Abu Dhabi appear to have yielded little. Although the parties are preparing for a major prisoner exchange, there has been no clear progress toward a peace agreement.
U.S. officials described the negotiations as difficult but productive. Nevertheless, Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart, and the Kremlin has shown no willingness to drop its demands.
Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator, who also led talks with Ukraine in 2022 and 2025, said a territorial exchange as part of a peace agreement was unacceptable.
For years, Russia has demanded that any agreement give it full control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have not managed to capture the entire region, and the territorial dispute remains one of the main obstacles to peace.
Zelensky said he hopes for concrete results from the talks by the end of this year. He said the course of the negotiations will depend largely on the United States’ stance toward Russia.
Ukraine is entering its fifth winter of war. Relentless Russian attacks are leaving thousands of people without electricity and heating. Referring to the large-scale attacks, Zelensky said he wants results by the end of the year and will do everything he can to achieve them.
Kyiv has repeatedly called for more pressure on Moscow, arguing that it is the only way to push Russia toward serious negotiations to end the war. The Trump administration, by contrast, has taken a softer approach toward Moscow: it has recently eased some sanctions against Russia, reached a deal on diesel fuel and asked Ukraine not to strike Russian oil refineries.
At his last meeting with Putin, in October, Witkoff described the Russian president as “humanitarian” after Russia released U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard from prison. He called Hubbard’s release a gesture of goodwill.
Meanwhile, attacks between Russia and Ukraine continued on November 12, as the U.S. envoys arrived in Moscow.
Ukrainian authorities reported explosions in Kyiv and said at least one person was killed. Another person died in the southern Kherson region, while attacks in the western Rivne region damaged civilian and energy infrastructure.
Russian authorities, for their part, said they had shot down drones flying toward Moscow and over other regions, including Rostov and Tula.
