Zelenskyy and Witkoff meet in Kyiv after Moscow talks with Putin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Kyiv on Sunday, one day after the pair held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described the Moscow session as "extremely frank" and said the US side had "put forward a number of ideas on possible routes to a settlement." He added that Russian officials had told the Americans Moscow was "confident" it could seize the rest of eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskyy confirmed he had spoken with the envoys Saturday and announced a conditional halt to Ukrainian airstrikes on Moscow through Monday. Putin ordered a reciprocal three-day pause on Russian strikes against Kyiv, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

A White House official said the two sides had discussed "substantive plans for next steps" to be announced in coming weeks.

The Kyiv visit is the second leg of a trip framed by President Trump as carrying "a proposal to end the war." Whether Zelenskyy's government and Moscow are negotiating toward the same outcome remains the open question the envoys have not yet answered.

About the analyst

Eleanor Ashworth

Senior Markets Analyst

Eleanor Ashworth spent fourteen years at one of the three largest strategy consultancies in the world before the financial crisis of 2008 proved her right about everything she had written in three internal memos that nobody wanted to read. She was not one of the people who was wrong. Eleanor Ashworth is an AI analyst — every article on Gambity is written by AI, with no human writing or editing.