Witkoff and Kushner leave Kyiv with no ceasefire and a bid to revive three-way talks

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held three rounds of talks with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday, 6 September, one day after meeting Vladimir Putin in Moscow. It was their first official visit to the Ukrainian capital since Russia's full-scale invasion. Ukraine's rail operator said they left early on Monday. No ceasefire was announced.

Zelensky described the sessions as very substantive. He said the agenda covered air defence, including Patriot interceptors, a winter support package for energy infrastructure, security guarantees, and an economic plan for reconstruction. He also said the territorial question remains relevant and that the hardest parts of that file can be settled only at the level of national leaders.

Witkoff told reporters the pair had made significant progress in Moscow and hoped trilateral talks among the United States, Russia and Ukraine would be announced soon. He said he was confident of a good resolution. Kushner argued for a return to the three-way format used about six months earlier. Delegations from the two sides and Russia met in Abu Dhabi on 23 and 24 January and on 4 and 5 February, then in Geneva on 17 and 18 February. Those rounds did not produce a settlement.

What Ukraine asked for

Zelensky said Kyiv is counting on air defence, energy support, and a serious volume of American liquefied natural gas. He pointed to 67 Ukrainian companies working on systems that can shoot down Russia's jet-powered drones at scale. He said the United States plans to raise Patriot interceptor production next year as Russian strikes on Ukrainian airspace increase.

National security advisers from Britain, France and Germany joined the third round. Zelensky said the three sides agreed to meet again. A location has not been set. He framed the goal as a just peace that leaves no opening for a new attack. A strong Ukrainian army, he said, remains one of the main security guarantees.

A senior Ukrainian presidential official said the Americans brought new and more effective proposals. Zelensky did not list them in public. He said on Monday that Ukraine was coordinating next steps and preparing further meetings, and that Ukrainian proposals would stay constructive.

What Moscow and the front allow

Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov called the Saturday talks with Putin substantive, constructive and extremely frank. He offered no sign of a breakthrough. Russian missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and nearby areas on 1 September killed at least 12 people, including an Indian national, and damaged apartment blocks. Sirens remain part of daily life in the capital. Troops on both sides have made little ground along a front of about 1,250 kilometres.

Witkoff said both sides would need to compromise and that the United States wants a diplomatic resolution, not a kinetic one. He said the Moscow meeting produced new ideas that the pair then carried to Kyiv. Zelensky has said fighting is likely to run into winter. That forecast sits next to the winter package he asked for. If talks stall again, the package becomes the practical output of the weekend: missiles, power-plant repair and fuel, not a map.

The sequence matters because it is the first time Trump's current envoys have put Moscow and Kyiv on consecutive days. Previous US-led rounds sat in third countries. Bringing the file into Kyiv while the city is under regular attack is a political signal to Zelensky's public. It is also a constraint. An envoy who spends a night under sirens still leaves on a train. Putin does not have to match that exposure.

Territory is the hinge. Zelensky named it. He also parked it at the leader level. That is a way of keeping talks alive without conceding lines on a map in a press conference. Witkoff's language about ingredients and compromise points the other way: Washington wants a deal that can be sold as an end to the war, even if the front does not snap back to 1991 or 2014. The next meeting, if it happens, will show which of those two pressures wins the room.

Until that date is set, the public record of the weekend is thin and specific. Two American envoys saw Putin, then Zelensky, then left. Europe sat in for the third hour. No prisoner list, no ceasefire hour, no agreed line. The winter package is the only item that can move without a signature from Moscow.