Trump envoys arrive in Moscow to try to revive Ukraine peace talks

A special U.S. aircraft carrying White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner landed in Moscow on Saturday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at reviving peace negotiations over Ukraine.

The aircraft arrived at Vnukovo airport and the envoys were expected to travel by road to the Kremlin, according to TASS. Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin envoy for economic cooperation with the United States, received them. Dmitriev has held numerous meetings with Witkoff in the United States and Russia over the past 18 months.

The plane entered Russian airspace from Finland, less than two weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe made the first visit to Moscow by a CIA director since the start of the war in Ukraine, the report said.

“

Our objective is for the visit and the negotiations with the American side to be as constructive and substantive as possible.

U.S. mediators had sought security guarantees from both sides. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy then announced a temporary halt to airstrikes against Russian territory and said Russia should do the same. “Our objective is for the visit and the negotiations with the American side to be as constructive and substantive as possible,” he said in his traditional address.

Witkoff and Kushner had not travelled to Moscow since January and had never visited Kyiv, despite Zelenskyy’s insistence. U.S. President Donald Trump said his envoys were carrying “a proposal to end the war.” Putin said he was willing to receive them but rejected a possible trilateral summit with the United States and Ukraine unless it was intended to sign a definitive peace agreement. Russian-Ukrainian negotiations have been stalled since February, when a U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran began.

“

A proposal to end the war. Because I ended eight wars.