Diplomacy around the war in Ukraine shifted into a higher gear this weekend. President Donald Trump’s two special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, touched down Saturday at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport carrying a proposal aimed at ending a conflict that has now stretched well past three and a half years.
The pair were met on the tarmac by Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s envoy for investment and economic cooperation, who has emerged over recent months as one of Washington’s main points of contact on the file. According to people familiar with the discussions, talks in the Russian capital are expected to center on the shape of a possible territorial settlement and on the security guarantees that both Kyiv and Moscow have insisted must accompany any lasting ceasefire.
This is not the first such trip for Witkoff and Kushner. The two men traveled to Moscow back in January, where they were received directly by President Vladimir Putin. This latest visit, however, comes against a noticeably different backdrop: diplomatic pressure has been building for weeks, and European capitals have stepped up calls for a negotiated end to the fighting.
Once their Moscow meetings wrap up, the American envoys are due to travel on to Kyiv to present the same proposal to Ukrainian officials. President Volodymyr Zelensky has hinted in recent days that he expects « many changes in the course of the war » over the month of September, though he stopped short of spelling out what form those changes might take.
The American push is part of a busy diplomatic sequence in which Washington is positioning itself as the indispensable broker, even at the risk of unsettling long-standing arrangements with its European allies. For Moscow, welcoming senior American envoys once again is itself a signal, arriving just months ahead of major political and budgetary deadlines on both sides of the Atlantic.
Whether this latest attempt succeeds where previous rounds of talks have stalled remains an open question. Western capitals and Kyiv alike will be watching closely for the first signs to emerge from these meetings in the coming hours, before Witkoff and Kushner head onward to the Ukrainian capital.
