Overview
- The envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held a multihour meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Saturday and the Kremlin announced a 72-hour halt to strikes on Kyiv to cover the visits.
- Witkoff and Kushner are expected to travel to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky after Moscow talks, and Zelensky said Ukraine would refrain from strikes on Moscow while the negotiators are travelling.
- Fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine during the visit, including a Russian strike on an industrial site in Dnipropetrovsk that local officials said killed at least five people and widespread missile and drone attacks reported by Ukrainian authorities.
- Major policy gaps remain: Moscow insists Ukraine cede control of the four mainland regions and abandon NATO aspirations while Kyiv rejects territorial concessions and demands security guarantees.
- The envoys are private-sector figures close to President Trump, their Moscow-first sequencing and prior stalled talks mean the pause is a fragile diplomatic opening rather than a breakthrough and will be judged by whether talks narrow those core gaps.