US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have arrived in Moscow for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin following two days of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The November 12 visit marks the 10th time that Witkoff has visited Russia for talks with Putin in an effort to resolve the conflict.
Along with Kushner, Witkoff has served as a lead negotiator in efforts to settle the long-running war since US President Donald Trump made it one of his foreign policy priorities upon taking office for his second term in 2025.
The two envoys were met at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport by Kirill Dmitriev, a senior Russian official involved in talks with Washington.
After meeting Putin, they are expected to fly to Dublin to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who arrived in Ireland earlier for a meeting of European leaders.
While the Abu Dhabi talks on November 10-11 appeared to yield only limited humanitarian progress, with a large-scale prisoner exchange in the works, there was no sign of a breakthrough toward peace.
US officials described the negotiations as tough but productive, while Moscow and Kyiv remained far apart in their positions, with the Kremlin offering no compromise on its hard-line demands.
Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, who led previous talks with Ukraine in 2022 and 2025 without breaking the deadlock, said territorial exchanges as part of a settlement were out of the question.
The Kremlin has for years been pushing for any peace deal to include full control over territory in Ukraine’s key eastern Donetsk region, which Russian forces have been unable to seize on the battlefield.
The issue has been widely regarded as central to the resolution of the conflict.
The talks, however, have also looked at wider security arrangements for Europe, with Washington seeking to broaden negotiations beyond Ukraine.
While such discussions could potentially bring European governments into a peace process from which they have so far largely been excluded, the matter has previously been used by Russia as another major obstacle to a diplomatic resolution of the war.
Prior to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow blamed the crisis on NATO and the United States, accusing them of “escalating tensions” and demanding what it called security guarantees.
The demands included a ban on Ukraine joining NATO and limits on the deployment of troops and weapons to the alliance’s eastern flank, a move that would effectively return NATO forces to their 1997 positions.
Zelenskyy said that Kyiv hoped concrete results could be achieved this year in talks on resolving the conflict as Ukraine heads into its fifth wartime winter with thousands of people repeatedly left without electricity or heating amid relentless Russian strikes.
But much of the progress in the talks depended on how the United States approaches Moscow, the Ukrainian president added.
“We are living through these massive attacks.” he said. “Of course, we want to get results by the end of this year, and of course, we will be doing everything to make that happen.”
Kyiv has repeatedly argued that increasing pressure on the Kremlin and its war machine could shift the balance of power in the war and force Russia into meaningful negotiations that could stop the conflict.
The current US administration, however, has taken a more conciliatory approach toward Russia, recently easing sanctions and striking a diesel deal with Moscow while pressing Kyiv not to attack its oil refineries.
During Witkoff’s last meeting with Putin in October, he called the Russian leader a “humanitarian” after Moscow released US citizen Stephen Hubbard from prison, framing the development as a goodwill gesture.
Speaking to RFE/RL’s Russian Service, political analyst Aleksandr Morozov, said that “talk of restoring some kind of European security sounds almost absurd” while Ukraine was experiencing “the peak of Russian aggression.”
“Throughout US President Donald Trump’s peace initiative, Moscow has been thanking him for his efforts while simultaneously manipulating Washington’s intention to bring about a cease-fire,” he added.
The fighting showed no sign of abating on November 12, as Russia and Ukraine exchanged fresh drone and missile attacks while the US envoys arrived in Moscow.
Explosions were reported in Kyiv, where at least one person was killed when a Russian drone has struck high-rise residential building, setting it on fire and partially destroying one of its floors.
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“I rushed outside right after I heard an explosion. This is neither the first nor the last one,” local resident Lyudmyla told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service following the strike, adding that such incidents “happen very often” in the Ukrainian capital.
Another person was reported killed in the southern Kherson region, while strikes damaged civilian and energy infrastructure in the western Rivne region, leaving more than 160 settlements there without power.
Since 2022, the Kremlin has repeatedly exploited cold weather to intensify its air strikes in a bid to pressure Ukraine into accepting its conditions for peace.
Since this year, however, the Ukrainian military has been responding with a campaign of its own, targeting Russian facilities that Kyiv says help fuel the war.
On November 12, Russian authorities reported intercepting drones heading toward Moscow and over several other regions, including Rostov and Tula.
(RFE/RL)
