Putin meets Trump's envoys in Moscow as US pushes for Ukraine peace deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin met US special representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Saturday as Washington stepped up efforts to revive negotiations aimed at ending Russia's war in Ukraine. Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Moscow earlier in the day and were received by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev. The meeting with Putin lasted more than three hours. Welcoming the US delegation, Putin said, 'The situation is, of course, not simple.' He also asked the envoys to convey his best wishes and gratitude to US President Donald Trump. Trump had earlier said that Witkoff and Kushner were carrying 'a proposal to end the war', although Washington has not publicly disclosed details of the plan. Moscow calls talks constructive After the meeting, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov described the discussions as 'substantive, very frank and constructive'. He said the sides discussed a 'whole series of ideas for a peace settlement'. Ushakov said Moscow had presented its assessment of the battlefield situation and stressed that Russia's 'root causes' of the conflict needed to be addressed. He added that Russia remained confident it could achieve its military objectives in Ukraine. The talks also covered economic matters and possible joint projects between Russia and the United States, according to Ushakov. Kirill Dmitriev called the delegation's visit an 'important peacemaking visit'. The envoys later left Moscow for Kyiv, where they are expected to hold talks on Sunday. Russia, Ukraine agree to pause strikes The diplomatic push coincided with a temporary halt in attacks targeting the Russian and Ukrainian capitals. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: 'The Russian president, the commander-in-chief, has given the order from midnight tonight not to strike Kyiv for three days.' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately said Kyiv would refrain from attacks on Moscow until Monday. 'From now through the end of Saturday, as well as on Sunday and Monday, Ukraine is ready to refrain from strikes on Moscow, and we expect the Russians to do the same regarding Kyiv,' Zelenskyy said. Fighting continues despite diplomacy The pause came as fighting continued elsewhere. Russian strikes across Ukraine on Saturday killed several civilians, according to Ukrainian officials, while Ukrainian attacks were also reported in Russia's Belgorod region. Zelenskyy accused Moscow of attempting to disrupt the US delegation's planned visit to Kyiv, saying Russian strikes had targeted Kyiv and Boryspil airports. 'Clearly, these Russian strikes on the airports are a reaction to the discussions and preparations for the possibility of the U.S. side using an aircraft to travel to Ukraine,' he said. The planned Kyiv visit will be Witkoff and Kushner's first since Trump returned to office, as Washington seeks to restart a peace process that has struggled to make significant progress. Page Generated = 2026-09-06 07:55:56_SERVER = Array ( [REDIRECT_STATUS] => 200 [HTTP_HOST] => www.moneycontrol.com [HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36 [HTTP_REFERER] => https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion.html/page-1013 [HTTP_X_AKAMAI_EDGESCAPE] => georegion=285,country_code=US,region_code=TX,city=DALLAS,dma=623,pmsa=1920,msa=1922,areacode=214+972,county=DALLAS,fips=48113,lat=32.7874,long=-96.7989,timezone=CST,zip=75201-75212+75214-75238+75240-75244+75246-75254+75260-75267+75270+75275+75277+75283-75285+75287+75301+75303+75312-75313+75315+75320+75326+75336+75339+75342+75354-75360+75367-75368+75370-75374+75376+75378-75382+75389-75395+75397-75398,continent=NA,throughput=vhigh,bw=5000,asnum=62874,location_id=0 [HTTP_TRUE_CLIENT_IP] => 45.61.119.180 [HTTP_PRAGMA] => no-cache [HTTP_AKAMAI_BOT] => Unknown Bot (B8E4201CA3B8EDF5DEAEE8E277BFB3CD):monitor:Browser Impersonator [HTTP_X_AKAMAI_DEVICE_CHARACTERISTICS] => is_mobile=false [HTTP_CDN_LOOP] => akamai;v=1.0;c=1 [HTTP_X_AKAMAI_CONFIG_LOG_DETAIL] => true [HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING] => gzip [HTTP_AKAMAI_ORIGIN_HOP] => 2 [HTTP_VIA] => 1.1 v1-akamaitech.net(ghost) (AkamaiGHost), 1.1 akamai.net(ghost) (AkamaiGHost), 1.1 google [HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR] => 45.61.119.180, 23.38.164.44,23.11.215.60,34.8.83.57 [HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL] => no-cache, max-age=0 [HTTP_X_CLOUD_TRACE_CONTEXT] => fba62b870bae1596cda55de8170e07b2/18116053038873467769 [HTTP_COOKIE] => gdpr_region=eu [HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO] => https [PATH] => /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin [SERVER_SIGNATURE] => Apache/2.4.57 (Ubuntu) Server at www.moneycontrol.com Port 80 [SERVER_SOFTWARE] => Apache/2.4.57 (Ubuntu) [SERVER_NAME] => www.moneycontrol.com [SERVER_ADDR] => 10.138.109.8 [SERVER_PORT] => 80 [REMOTE_ADDR] => 35.191.36.152 [DOCUMENT_ROOT] => /home/moneycontrol [REQUEST_SCHEME] => http [CONTEXT_PREFIX] => [CONTEXT_DOCUMENT_ROOT] => /home/moneycontrol [SERVER_ADMIN] => [no address given] [SCRIPT_FILENAME] => /home/moneycontrol/network18concern.php [REMOTE_PORT] => 37264 [REDIRECT_URL] => /europe/ [REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING] => url=https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion.html/page-1013 [GATEWAY_INTERFACE] => CGI/1.1 [SERVER_PROTOCOL] => HTTP/1.1 [REQUEST_METHOD] => GET [QUERY_STRING] => url=https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion.html/page-1013 [REQUEST_URI] => /europe/?url=https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion.html/page-1013 [SCRIPT_NAME] => /network18concern.php [PHP_SELF] => /network18concern.php [REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT] => 1788661556.307 [REQUEST_TIME] => 1788661556 )