President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff will hold a meeting at the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin before their planned arrival in Ukraine this weekend.
A Russian government-sponsored outlet reported that Kushner and Witkoff “expect to arrive in Moscow and then Kyiv on September 5-6,” citing an unnamed source. The pair will meet Putin shortly before traveling to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two great negotiators,” Trump said. “They’ve done a great job, and we sent them over to see whether or not we can get something done, and there may be a good chance of that.”
“It’s a personality problem in Russia-Ukraine,” the president also said. “You have President Zelensky and President Putin. They truly hate each other. You know what hate is? They have serious hate, and it’s getting in the way of them.”
It will be Witkoff and Kushner’s first trip to Kyiv since Trump returned to office last year. They previously visited Moscow and spoke with Putin and other officials in January.
The timing of the meeting at the Kremlin will give the team a chance to reassess the position of the Russian government and determine whether the needle has moved on negotiations that have, for years, been functionally pointless due to contrasting visions.
“I think what they’re trying to get out of this is some sort of deal that they can strike with Putin that would make him slightly softer on the Ukraine side — something that could instigate negotiations,” Jan Techau, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Washington Examiner. “And move the Russians to adopt a starting position on negotiations that could be acceptable to the Ukrainians — something that they can then carry to Kyiv and say, ‘See, the Russians have moved now, you guys have to move as well.’”
Techau is not optimistic about Kushner and Witkoff getting what they want from the Kremlin, cautioning that “these visits have never really produced very much of an outcome, at least not in the Ukraine context.”
“They could never change Putin’s opinion on the war. Putin is a hard-liner,” Techau continued. “His demands are quite clear. He’s not moving — he basically wants negotiations under terms that mean that Ukraine gives up before negotiations even start. That’s not acceptable for the Ukrainians. And so they can travel there as much as they want [but] as long as Putin is not changing his fundamental stance on the war, which he’s unlikely to do, none of this will make too much of a difference.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with his Russian counterpart in Moscow less than two weeks ago. The nature of these meetings and what was conveyed remains largely unknown.
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Reports have variously suggested that he was in the Russian capital to press for peace with Ukraine, caution them against aiding the Islamic regime in Iran, and warn against a hypothetical invasion of the Baltic states.
Officials in both the United States and Russia initially denied the reports or pleaded ignorance. Trump later dismissed questions about the nature of the visit, calling it a “semi-routine” meeting between counterparts.
