Ukraine War News: Trump Envoys to Meet Putin in Moscow
The latest ukraine war news is a new round of shuttle diplomacy that begins in Moscow. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner announced on Wednesday that he and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to the Russian capital on Thursday to meet President Vladimir Putin, one day after United States-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi ended without a clear breakthrough. After Moscow, the two envoys will fly to Dublin to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, keeping alive a negotiation that has produced months of meetings without a settlement.
The announcement also underlines how much of this diplomacy runs through two men with no formal place in the chain of command. Kushner, the president's son-in-law, acts as a top diplomat despite holding no official role, while Witkoff, the Middle East envoy, has become the administration's point man on Ukraine. Their schedule — Abu Dhabi to Moscow to Dublin — is a peace process run by personal envoys.
What Kushner Announced in Abu Dhabi
Kushner told reporters that he and Witkoff would go to Moscow to review what had been discussed in the Emirates and to try to move the talks forward, saying the pair saw "some openings and some opportunities there." The phrasing was careful: openings and opportunities, not agreements or deals.
He set out two immediate goals for the Moscow meeting. The first is to try to finalize humanitarian relief and prisoner releases, the kind of concrete measures negotiators often pursue when the larger political questions are stuck. The second goal is to push to bring European countries into the talks, a multilateral format that Moscow has so far resisted. Russia has consistently preferred to deal with Washington alone.
After Moscow, he and Witkoff will travel to Dublin to meet Zelensky and discuss the peace proposals that came out of the Abu Dhabi talks. "We're going to be with President Zelensky to debrief with him and further explore some of the ideas that we came up with here today," Kushner said. The envoys will carry whatever they hear from Putin directly to the Ukrainian president.
Two Days of Talks That Ended Without a Breakthrough
The Abu Dhabi talks ran across Tuesday and Wednesday inside the five-star Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental. They were the first United States-brokered trilateral talks between Russia and Ukraine since February, and the American side treated the meeting itself as an achievement after nine months of deadlock.
The delegations themselves told the story of a negotiation conducted between people who have spent years on opposite sides of a war. Ukraine's chief delegate was Rustem Umerov, and among the Ukrainian officials present was Kyrylo Budanov, a close Zelensky adviser who heads Kyiv's presidential administration. Across the table sat Dmitry Minaev, the head of counterintelligence for the Russian security service, the FSB. According to Ukrainian intelligence, Minaev had orchestrated an assassination attempt targeting Budanov in 2019.
The discussions stretched for four hours on Tuesday, and by the time they ended there were no tangible results to report. Zelensky still welcomed what he called a "constructive" debate, while the Russian side, resistant to the ceasefire demanded by Ukraine and its allies, remained silent. Kyiv was willing to call the conversation constructive even without a result, because keeping the process alive is in its interest.
The lack of a breakthrough was not a surprise. The war is now in its fifth year, Russian forces hold about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, and the two sides remain far apart on the terms of any possible settlement despite Trump's repeated insistence that a deal can be done. Rubio had framed the stakes before the talks opened, speaking to reporters in Paris on November 9 on the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Seven. "We seem to be the only country in the world and the President the only leader in the world that can get the Russians and the Ukrainians to the same table," he said. He added that Trump, who had just suffered a stinging defeat in the November 3 midterm elections, had made resolving the conflict "a priority."
The Sticking Points: Territory, Ceasefire and Security Guarantees
The substance of the disagreement has barely moved since the war began. Umerov said in his opening remarks that Kyiv was focused on achieving security guarantees and a lasting peace. That is the core of the Ukrainian position: any settlement must include guarantees strong enough to prevent a new Russian attack, and a ceasefire must come first, before the broader questions are settled.
Russia's position, as set out by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, runs in the opposite direction. Lavrov underlined Moscow's preference for negotiating a broad European security framework before tackling the specifics of the war itself — a formula Kyiv reads as a way of postponing a ceasefire indefinitely while Moscow keeps what it has taken on the battlefield.
The territorial question remains the hardest of all. There has been no public sign that Putin is willing to drop his insistence that Ukraine surrender the entire eastern region of Donbas before a peace deal can be struck. A United States-backed draft peace plan has drawn proposed changes from Kyiv and Europe, which Putin has called unacceptable. After an earlier round of talks with Putin, his senior aide Yuri Ushakov summed up the state of the draft bluntly: "We have not come up with a compromise version yet. A lot of work lies ahead." The nato news dimension runs through all of this: the envoys have spoken of a new European security architecture that would better accommodate Russia, echoing Putin's goal of undermining NATO, while the Europeans fear a settlement that trades Ukraine's security for a broader arrangement with Moscow. The ceasefire question is bound up with the same dispute. Trump said on October 11 that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a ceasefire in attacks on energy infrastructure, only for Russia to keep striking Ukraine's power grid while Kyiv hit Russian oil refineries.
Europe Pushed to the Sidelines
One of the most striking features of the Abu Dhabi talks was the treatment of Europe. Representatives of the E3 — Germany, France and the United Kingdom — travelled to the Emirates to speak to the American mediators, fearing further concessions to the Kremlin in a hasty settlement. They arrived to find that Russia did not want them there at all. "Let the Europeans stay at the hotel!" Lavrov said from Moscow on Tuesday, dismissing the idea of European participation.
In the end, the Europeans had to settle for a secondary role, but they managed to remind the American envoys of their priorities before the trilateral meeting took place. "We were very clear. These discussions on security architecture, why not, but first there must be a ceasefire, then security guarantees for Ukraine to prevent any new Russian aggression. Only after that can we talk about a broader plan," a European diplomat said.
A joint European-American statement issued on Tuesday put the European demands in writing. Brussels and Washington expressed support for "a strong post-war European security architecture and arrangements," while insisting on respect for Ukraine's "sovereignty" and "territorial integrity." Zelensky made his own frustration plain from Copenhagen, where he landed on Tuesday. "This may not sound very polite, but my job is not to make Trump happy. My task is to do everything possible to involve Americans and Europeans in the talks," he said.
The Washington Clock: Midterms and a New Congress
The diplomacy is also running against a clock in Washington. Trump spoke on November 6 from Washington of a "big, beautiful agreement" to end the war. The president wants a settlement he can present as a defining achievement, but the political landscape has changed. The midterm elections 2026 delivered a stinging defeat for the president's party on November 3, and a new Congress hostile to the Trump administration takes office in January. The administration has about two months left in which it can negotiate without facing a Congress controlled by its opponents.
Comfort Ero, the head of the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organisation, put the pressure plainly. "Witkoff and Kushner are probably very nervous and want to present themselves as peacemakers rather than businessmen. They know Democrats in Congress will be watching their work closely," she said.
That scrutiny is already taking shape. Chris Coons, the Democrat likely to become the next chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could hardly have been more explicit as the talks opened. He declared that billionaire Elon Musk, whose Starlink network cut off the Ukrainian military's access in October, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, "and anyone else who played a role in cutting off Ukraine's ability to defend itself must answer for it. Congress must get to the bottom of this." The white house news out of Washington has reflected that pressure, and a breakthrough would give the president something concrete to point to. The pentagon news angle is part of the same picture: the Defence Department sits at the centre of the questions the new Congress is likely to ask, from the Starlink cutoff to the flow of military aid.
A Long Run of Shuttle Diplomacy
The Moscow trip is not the first time Witkoff and Kushner have carried the American position directly to Putin, and the history of those meetings is a guide to what the new round is likely to produce. Russian officials have hosted multiple rounds with the pair since late 2025, sometimes for several hours at a time, and described the talks as "constructive" even when no public breakthrough followed.
One of the earlier rounds took Witkoff to St. Petersburg on October 21, where he met Putin at the Constantine Palace to discuss the war. Witkoff said he hoped to discuss resuming the trilateral talks so technical teams could work on next steps. Putin thanked Trump and Witkoff for their efforts, and the meeting ended without any suggestion of an imminent breakthrough. Another round of talks with Putin, five hours long, also failed to produce a breakthrough. The trump administration has been pursuing this effort since early last year, and the record so far is one of activity without resolution. That history is why the Moscow trip is watched with a mixture of interest and scepticism. What is different this time is the timing: the Abu Dhabi talks have just ended, the envoys are going to Moscow immediately rather than waiting, and they will then go directly to Zelensky in Dublin.
What Happens Next
The immediate question is what Putin says in Moscow on Thursday. If Putin is willing to move on humanitarian relief and prisoner releases, that would be a concrete, if limited, result. If he is willing to discuss bringing European countries into the talks, that would be a more significant shift, since Moscow has resisted a multilateral format from the start.
The Dublin leg matters just as much. Whatever the envoys hear in Moscow, they will carry it to Zelensky, and the Ukrainian president's response will determine whether the week produces momentum or another round of recrimination. Zelensky has been consistent about his conditions: a ceasefire first, security guarantees second, and European participation throughout. Beyond this week, the larger questions remain unresolved: the Donbas dispute has not moved, the ceasefire has not been agreed, and the security guarantees Ukraine wants have not been defined. The political clock in Washington is running down, with a new Congress arriving in January. The week ahead will show whether the openings Kushner described are the start of a settlement or another chapter in a negotiation that has produced many meetings and no peace.
Source: CNN