Donald Trump’s emissaries, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and businessman Steve Witkoff, completed their final mission in Kyiv this Sunday. This was not without difficulty, as they had to relaunch peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. After meeting with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Saturday, the U.S. mediators arrived for the first time in the Ukrainian capital by train to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky.
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Beyond praise and kind words, no concrete progress was made public towards resolving a war that has lasted more than four and a half years.
The territorial issue can only be “resolved” in meetings between presidents, Zelensky assures
One by one. Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin advisor present at the more than three-hour meeting on Saturday, described the meeting between Trump’s men and Putin as “constructive, frank, and useful.” After today’s meetings in Kyiv, Witkoff said he felt optimistic and assured that the U.S. hopes to find a diplomatic solution. And the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that the peace negotiations with the U.S. emissaries had been “very substantial.” However, The Kyiv Independent headlined tonight that “the war will continue,” a statement so often repeated that it sounds like resignation.
After the negotiations with Trump’s emissaries, Zelensky informed journalists that economic and security guarantees for Ukraine had been discussed, as well as the delivery of missiles for its air defenses, in addition to a support package for the coming winter. And it seems that Ukraine will have no choice but to endure its fifth winter at war.
The Ukrainian president acknowledged that the current initiative to achieve peace will not lead to the end of the war in the short term. “If the war continues, and we expect it to continue, we count on the winter aid package… both for air defense and for the energy sector,” he explained.
Despite the reality, Zelensky said that the resumption of diplomatic negotiations is itself a positive step. Washington’s mediation efforts stalled when Israel and the U.S. began bombing Iran on February 28. Washington’s attention then focused on the Middle East, and the Ukrainian issue was frozen.
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Both Zelensky and Kushner expressed hope that tripartite contacts could be resumed, that is, negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv with the Americans as mediators.
The U.S. representatives also met with the national security advisors of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, who support Kyiv. With them, Zelensky said, it was agreed to repeat meetings like this Sunday’s in the coming weeks to, Kushner added, seek “ways to advance” the peace process.
The trip of Trump’s emissaries served to confirm that Russia continues to maintain its maximalist demands. On Saturday, Putin expressed his desire to continue “joint work with the Americans in search of a political-diplomatic solution,” but, according to Ushakov, he insisted on the Nazi tendencies of the Ukrainian government and the need to eliminate “all the original causes of the conflict,” which means that Ukraine must renounce joining NATO.
Witkoff said this Sunday that Russia and Ukraine must make “concessions” for the war to end. The main issue where these concessions are urgently needed is the territorial one. On this, the Russian position is the one Putin set in the summer of 2024: there will only be a ceasefire if Kyiv’s troops leave the areas of the Ukrainian Donetsk province they still control. This would allow Moscow to keep the entire eastern Donbass region (formed by Donetsk and Luhansk) and for Putin to show a victory.
But Zelensky has always refused to cede territory, as for Ukrainians it would be like a surrender. The Ukrainian leader repeated this Sunday that this issue can only be resolved if there is a personal meeting between him and Putin. “The situation is not, of course, easy,” Putin told Witkoff and Kushner on Saturday. If, as Zelensky fears, the war must continue next winter, will there be an agreement afterward and will they be able to end the hell and the killings? That will be a task for another mission in this long process toward peace.
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