{"id":1065026,"date":"2026-07-03T02:47:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T02:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1065026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T02:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T02:47:15","slug":"as-ukraine-war-escalates-witkoff-and-kushner-are-focused-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1065026\/","title":{"rendered":"As Ukraine War Escalates, Witkoff and Kushner Are Focused on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s president has said<\/a> he understands why the Trump administration is \u201cdistracted\u201d by Iran. Ukraine\u2019s president has lamented<\/a> that his country is not the top U.S. priority, telling reporters, \u201cunfortunately, we are in this queue of these wars.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Russia and Ukraine have escalated their attacks on each other\u2019s territory to what experts describe as one of the most dangerous moments since Russia\u2019s invasion began more than four years ago.<\/p>\n

At the center of the disconnect between the increasing violence in Eastern Europe and the Trump administration\u2019s seeming lack of focus on it are the president\u2019s two main negotiators for both Iran and Ukraine: the special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Trump\u2019s son-in-law. They traveled to Qatar this week for another round of Iran talks<\/a>, even as Ukraine was launching more drones toward Moscow and as Russia was readying its latest barrage<\/a> targeting Kyiv, where at least 21 people were reported killed Thursday in overnight attacks.<\/p>\n

The last time Russian and Ukrainian officials are known to have met face to face was in Switzerland<\/a> in February, with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner sitting between them. In the months since, the Iran war consumed the Trump officials\u2019 attention, even as the fighting escalated between Russia and Ukraine \u2014 a conflict that Mr. Trump had promised to solve within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were focused on Iran,\u201d Mr. Trump said last month, suggesting that the administration could renew its efforts to end the Ukraine war once Iran was \u201cin the rearview mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n

The limited diplomatic bandwidth at Mr. Trump\u2019s disposal has highlighted his extraordinarily slimmed-down approach to high-stakes diplomacy. The post of U.S. ambassador to Moscow has been vacant for more than a year, and the acting ambassador to Kyiv resigned in April. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top diplomats have played a limited role on Ukraine, leaving Mr. Trump\u2019s two envoys as the pivotal players.<\/p>\n

To both Moscow and Kyiv, locked in a grinding war that has killed or wounded more than two million troops<\/a>, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner are valuable contacts with direct lines to the American president. But they also represent a bottleneck, without the diplomatic teams that would normally lay the groundwork for high-level talks.<\/p>\n

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine gave voice to frustration with the pair in comments to CBS News on Thursday, saying that he was still waiting for them to visit Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand that there are challenges in the Middle East,\u201d he said<\/a>, adding, \u201cbut we need more, more than words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who both helped broker a cease-fire in the war in Gaza last year<\/a>, are real estate developers who describe themselves as deal makers who eschew the staid traditions of diplomacy. A senior U.S. official said that approach means they juggle multiple negotiations at a time, just as they did in their business careers and as Mr. Kushner did during Mr. Trump\u2019s first<\/a> term<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said the two men had remained in touch with Ukrainian and Russian officials almost daily, and had held in-person meetings with them that have not been reported. The official said that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff were prepared to travel to Russia and Ukraine if there was something new to discuss, but that they would not travel \u201cfor a photo op.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Moscow, officials are also eager for Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner to re-engage, according to two people close to the Kremlin and two former diplomats who visited Moscow last week.<\/p>\n

The Russians are \u201cdesperately waiting for the return of Witkoff and Kushner,\u201d said one of the former diplomats, Thomas Greminger, the head of a Swiss think tank who traveled to Moscow for a foreign policy conference. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of frustration about the two. At the same time, nobody has an alternative to U.S. facilitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia values his relationship with Mr. Witkoff in particular, the two people close to the Kremlin said. Mr. Putin sees the close friend of Mr. Trump as a critical channel for accomplishing Kremlin goals that only the United States can deliver, including an arrangement keeping Ukraine out of NATO.<\/p>\n

But Russian officials have been frustrated by the uneven nature of those visits and lack of follow-up, and have voiced a desire for a more structured diplomatic process, according to people familiar with the negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going to move this process to resolution, it requires an intense diplomatic effort,\u201d said Thomas Graham, a longtime American diplomat who managed a strategic dialogue with the Kremlin during the George W. Bush administration and was also at the Moscow conference. \u201cThe U.S. is the only country in a position to lead it, if they were so inclined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Witkoff has met with Mr. Putin seven times since Mr. Trump returned to office, most recently this past January and December, when he was joined by Mr. Kushner. He has yet to visit Ukraine. Mr. Putin said on Sunday<\/a> that he expected the pair back in Moscow after the end \u201cof the \u2018hot phase\u2019 on the Iranian track.\u201d The diplomatic vacuum left by the United States has also been evident in Europe, where officials from across the continent have yet to resolve a debate over who among them might be the right person or group of people to talk to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

In January and February, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner convened a series of meetings that were among the first direct, in-person talks between Russia and Ukraine since the war\u2019s first weeks in 2022. Those meetings ended after Mr. Trump went to war with Iran on Feb. 28, a conflict that thrust Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner into the center of increasingly urgent efforts to negotiate an end to an unpopular war.<\/p>\n

But while U.S. attention was consumed by Iran, the Ukraine war only intensified. Ukraine honed its long-range strike capabilities, assaulting Moscow, disrupting Russian fuel supplies and pressing a campaign to cut off the Russian-annexed peninsula of Crimea in an effort to change the tide of the war. Mr. Putin rejected a taunting meeting request<\/a> from Mr. Zelensky and ramped up his strikes on Ukraine.<\/p>\n

To their critics, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner have sought a peace agreement that would reward Russia for its aggression by acceding to some of Mr. Putin\u2019s demands on Ukraine and enabling business deals with Russia. That has led some to argue that their distraction in recent months has benefited Ukraine by reducing the pressure on Mr. Zelensky to accept Russia\u2019s terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe drama of more Witkoff-Kushner trips simply won\u2019t shift the trajectory of the war,\u201d said Andrew S. Weiss, who oversees research on Russia and Eurasia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.<\/p>\n

Mr. Weiss, a former State Department official, warned that the war had entered an \u201cescalatory spiral\u201d of increasingly aggressive Ukrainian strikes deep into Russian territory and Russia\u2019s drone and missile barrages. Ukraine was vulnerable, he said, because its air defense capabilities have been outstripped by Russia\u2019s ability to produce more missiles. The United States, he argued, needed to work closely with Ukraine \u201cto have some influence over the choices they make about targeting and tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr. Trump has played down the stakes for the United States, while insisting he wants to end the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has no impact on us, other than we sell weapons,\u201d Mr. Trump said on the sidelines of the Group of 7 summit in France last month. \u201cWe\u2019re thousands of miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analysts say Europe\u2019s bloodiest conflict since World War II does affect the United States, and that it could still escalate into an even bigger conflagration. Mr. Zelensky has recently threatened neighboring Belarus<\/a>, a close Russian ally, while Mr. Putin could choose to test Mr. Trump\u2019s resolve to defend NATO allies in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis conflict is not one that waits for you to have time for it,\u201d said Samuel Charap, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation think tank. \u201cIt\u2019s constantly evolving. The risks of escalation are always there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s president has said he understands why the Trump administration is \u201cdistracted\u201d by Iran. Ukraine\u2019s president has lamented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1065027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7654],"tags":[20886,2000,299,4609,292218,228747,2046,332,44787,1757,657,33460,122164,95596,26833,21151],"class_list":["post-1065026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ukraine","tag-donald-j","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-international-relations","tag-jared","tag-kushner","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-steven","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-vladimir-v","tag-volodymyr","tag-witkoff","tag-zelensky"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116853764580715728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1065027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}