Witkoff and Kushner Meet Putin, Say Trilateral Ukraine Talks Restarted
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow on Thursday, November 12, to brief him on
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow on Thursday, November 12, to brief him on Ukraine peace talks that ended a day earlier in Abu Dhabi. Witkoff said afterward that progress had been made and a new meeting had been set.
The envoys, who are President Donald Trump's special envoy and son-in-law respectively, went straight from the Gulf talks to the Kremlin. Washington is seeking fresh momentum after a push for peace that had stalled.
What the Abu Dhabi talks produced
The two days of US-mediated negotiations in the United Arab Emirates capital were the first direct discussions between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in nine months. They ended Wednesday without a major breakthrough.
The one concrete result was an agreement to swap a large number of prisoners. The exact figure has yet to be announced.
What the envoys said after meeting Putin
Speaking at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport just before leaving, Witkoff said: "People didn't think that we were going to restart trilateral. We've restarted it. We've set a new meeting." He added that "this is what President Trump wants to see."
Witkoff also appeared to say European representatives would join the next round. "They're our partners, and it's important for them to be involved," he said.
Kushner described "very fulsome and detailed discussions on all the topics," which he said should inform what he hoped would be the next multilateral talks.
Starshield dispute in Kyiv
As the Moscow meeting took place, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his military again faces "systematic" restrictions on Starshield, the military-grade version of SpaceX's Starlink satellite service. He said this leaves Ukraine struggling to intercept Russian jet-powered drones.
Zelensky told European leaders in Dublin that Kyiv was trying to resolve the matter with the American side. A similar connectivity problem hit the front line in late October and lasted about a week before it was fixed.
The envoys were expected to travel on to Dublin to brief Zelensky on the Moscow talks. "If someone in America is making decisions that basically treat Ukrainian territory as if it is not Ukrainian, then this tells us where things are going," Zelensky said, without elaborating.
