There is no win-win solution that can end the war in Ukraine

The latest trip by U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Moscow and Kyiv produced almost nothing, according to Der Standard. The article presents the result as unsurprising and argues that the journey exposed how little Donald Trump’s administration understands about the war in eastern Europe, or how little it wants to understand.

Kushner visited Kyiv for the first time and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The visit came as the two U.S. representatives traveled between Russia and Ukraine in an effort that, the article says, yielded virtually no results.

The central problem, in the article’s framing, is the search for a “win-win” outcome capable of ending the war. It argues that no such simple arrangement exists in Ukraine, where the competing positions cannot be reconciled through Washington’s apparent lack of preparation or understanding.

The article takes a sharply skeptical view of the U.S. approach. It says Putin benefits from Washington’s naivety, portraying the Kremlin as able to exploit an American policy that fails to grasp the realities of the conflict. The trip therefore becomes more than an unsuccessful diplomatic mission: it is presented as another demonstration of the limits of the administration’s thinking about the war.