Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner went straight from the negotiating rooms of Abu Dhabi to Moscow, and on Thursday they spent a little over two hours with Vladimir Putin. Facing them were presidential aides Yury Ushakov and Vladimir Medinsky and the Kremlin’s investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
The opening exchanges were warm. Putin thanked Donald Trump’s team for bringing Russian and Ukrainian negotiators back into one building, while Witkoff pointed to the agreed prisoner exchange, which he described as set to be the largest of the war. Kushner carried a request from the Europeans, who were in the Emirates but not at the table: they want a formal role in what comes next.
On substance, the Russian leader stood firm. According to Interfax and other Russian agencies, he insisted Moscow keeps the Ukrainian land it occupies, and he warned that any Western troops sent to Ukraine as peacekeepers would be treated as a “legitimate target”. Such a force is central to the guarantees European capitals have been drafting for Kyiv. The one fresh idea he floated was an aid operation in the frontline city of Kostiantynivka, run jointly by Russians and Ukrainians, once sappers had spent five days clearing the approaches.
Afterwards Witkoff was quoted as saying that a fresh round of three-way talks had been agreed, this time with Europeans taking part. Who would speak for Europe remains unsettled, and EU leaders gathering informally in Dublin are expected to discuss it.
Dublin was also the envoys’ next stop, for a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has called the atmosphere in Abu Dhabi constructive but doubts the Americans will return from Moscow with anything solid. Officials in Kyiv also fear the agenda is drifting from a ceasefire toward a debate on Europe’s wider security order, a shift that could hand Russia more time.
