Can Trump restart Russia-Ukraine peace talks?

The visit by White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow and Kyiv left behind more questions than answers. Details of the meetings remain scarce, although all participants have described them as “positive”. The trip did not produce a breakthrough, but it may mark the beginning of a new process.

The article presents Donald Trump’s attempt to restart negotiations as a positive development, while warning that Russia’s position has grown tougher. Moscow wants Ukraine to remain genuinely neutral, without Western military forces or covert presence. It also wants to retain territories it has occupied and demands that Ukraine withdraw from the part of Donbas still under Ukrainian control.

Russia is seeking limits on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces and the weapons they can possess. Its demands also include the disbanding and outlawing of far-right and paramilitary groups, repeal of legislation restricting the use of Russian, and elections in which Russia-friendly parties could compete freely against pro-Western parties. For Ukraine and its European supporters, the terms would be difficult to accept after months of arguing that the war’s momentum was shifting.

Ukrainian and Western officials had pointed to a slower Russian offensive and intensified Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia, including attacks on oil facilities that caused fuel shortages. The campaign against Russian energy infrastructure was intended to pressure Vladimir Putin into accepting more favorable peace terms for Ukraine. Instead, the article says, Russia’s negotiating position became even less flexible, and a land swap once considered a possible way to compensate Ukraine for leaving Donbas was abandoned.

The Kremlin has also pursued a destructive campaign against Ukraine’s economy. Russian attacks have disrupted exports of grain and ore through Odesa ports and systematically targeted logistics hubs, warehouses belonging to major retailers and large industrial facilities, including metallurgical plants and beverage factories. Against this backdrop, the return of Kushner and Witkoff to the conflict’s diplomatic front, and their personal reception by Putin, signaled a change in Washington’s approach. A week earlier, CIA Director John Ratcliffe had visited Moscow but did not meet Putin, holding talks instead with the heads of the FSB and SVR before returning home.