KYIV, Ukraine --U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held “encouraging” talks in Kyiv on Sunday in their first official visit to Ukraine, but made no breakthrough toward ending Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The Trump administration’s push to end the fighting has lost momentum, with the focus on the Iran war for the past six months.
The trip by the Americans, part of a renewed effort to end the war, followed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, as both sides have escalated their aerial attacks in the more than four and a half-year all-out war.
Despite the latest diplomatic push, the core demands of Moscow and Kyiv remain mutually exclusive, especially over territorial concessions, underscoring the difficulty of reaching an agreement. Kushner acknowledged the challenge, saying the U.S. was working “behind the scenes” to create the conditions for a possible deal.
“It’s a very, very hard problem, but we’re going to try,” Kushner said.
Russia has recently been using fast-flying jet-powered drones, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv. Troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometre (775-mile) front line.
Zelenskyy held three rounds of talks with the Americans on Sunday, the last of which brought in national security advisers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Security guarantees and a winter plan
Zelenskyy said at a news conference that the discussions covered air defence needs -- including Patriot systems -- and a “winter package” of support covering both air defence and energy infrastructure before the colder months. He said that Kyiv was seeking “serious volumes” of American support on that front, with backing from European partners as well.
The Ukrainian president said the U.S. planned to increase production of Patriot interceptor missiles next year, with Germany also expanding its own production under existing licensing agreements.
Zelenskyy said that Russia had intensified strikes on Ukrainian cities before Russia’s State Duma election later this month, calling the attacks deliberate “terror” against civilians. He said Ukraine was working with 67 domestic companies developing systems to shoot down Russia’s jet-powered drones at scale.
The Ukrainian leader said the territorial question “remains relevant,” but reiterated his view that such difficult issues “can only be resolved at the level of leaders.” Zelenskyy said the talks also touched on long-term security guarantees and economic support for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. He said that a strong Ukrainian army remained “one of the main guarantees of security.”
Zelenskyy said the sides agreed to hold a follow-up meeting involving Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe, though a location has not been set.
Witkoff said the U.S. was pursuing “a diplomatic resolution to this conflict, not a kinetic resolution.” Referring to the previous day’s talks, he said the meeting in Moscow had produced “new ideas” that were later brought to Kyiv. He pointed to the presence of national security advisers from the so-called E3 nations -- France, Germany and the U.K. -- as evidence that “collaboration is critical” to reaching a deal.
Asked whether Washington was prepared to increase pressure on Russia if the talks produced no breakthrough, Kushner said the U.S. approach was to look for a “win-win” outcome.
He said his father-in-law, U.S. President Donald Trump, was focused not just on ending the fighting but on building “a framework that could actually lead to a durable peace,” and that he and Witkoff had held a “constructive and substantive” meeting with Putin, discussing what Russia, Ukraine and the wider world could each gain from a settlement.
Kushner said the two envoys hoped to revive trilateral talks involving Russia and Ukraine directly, a format last used roughly six months earlier, and said that Washington remained in near-daily contact with Ukrainian officials even between visits.
No breakthroughs in Moscow talks
Saturday’s meeting in Moscow lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without any major developments being announced. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, described the talks as constructive, frank and useful, but he didn’t discuss specific outcomes.
While Moscow offered its “comprehensive assessment” of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, Ushakov said, the talks weren’t purely focused on the war.
“Economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail,” he said.
The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner was in January when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin.
Russia and Ukraine continue to exchange fire
Putin and Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks took place. Still, the two traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said.
Air raids on the capital noticeably eased during the U.S. envoys’ visit, prompting Zelenskyy to joke that their presence in Kyiv appeared more potent than the Patriot missile systems Ukraine has been urgently seeking.
Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and wounded at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, wounding seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region.
Ukraine’s air force said Sunday it intercepted 82 drones out of 108 launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles. In Russia, a man was killed and a woman was seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the waters of the Black and Azov Seas.
Mixed hopes on the ground
In Kyiv on Sunday, dozens gathered for a nationwide 9 a.m. moment of silence honoring Ukraine’s fallen soldiers, a daily ritual held in cities across the country.
Nataliia Lipei, 67, whose son Viktor was killed in December 2022, was among those who attended. Despite a health condition, she has traveled from city to city to take part.
“I hope these steps and these meetings will definitely produce results, because there has been so much bloodshed and so many deaths here that we have to stop all of this,” Lipei told The Associated Press.
Not everyone shared her hope for the talks. Oleksandr Pastukhov, a 27-year-old video editor who joined the commemoration, was skeptical the envoys’ visit would change anything.
In his Sunday prayer, Pope Leo XIV renewed his appeal for peace in Ukraine and said he hopes the negotiations will bring results.
“I hope that the efforts undertaken in recent days to resume negotiations will bear concrete fruit and make way for diplomacy,” he told the gathered faithful in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
Volodymyr Yurchuk and Yevhenii Ocheretianyi in Kyiv, and Elise Morton in London, contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Samya Kullab, The Associated Press
