KYIV – U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to arrive in Kyiv on Sunday, marking their first trip to the Ukrainian capital as part of a renewed diplomatic effort to seek peace in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
Their visit comes a day after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as Washington looks to restart stalled peace negotiations at a time when both Russia and Ukraine have intensified aerial attacks.
The U.S. effort to broker an end to the fighting has slowed in recent months, with American attention largely centered over the past six months on the Iran war. Witkoff and Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, were last known to have traveled to Moscow in January, when they also met Putin for discussions at the Kremlin.
Saturday’s closed-door meeting in Moscow ran for more than three hours but concluded without any public announcement of a breakthrough. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, later characterized the discussions as constructive, frank and useful, while offering no details on concrete results.
Ushakov said Moscow presented its “comprehensive assessment” of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, though he added that the talks were not limited solely to the war.
“Economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail,” he said.
The air war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified as troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometer (775-mile) front line. 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.
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Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks take place. Still, the two traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said.
Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and injured 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, injuring seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Sunday 82 drones out of the 108 launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles, were intercepted.
In Russia, a man was killed and a woman seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, occupied Crimea and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.
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