By Gram Slattery<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are heading abroad to attempt to forge a \u200cpeace deal between Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. president told reporters on Friday.<\/p>\n
During \u200ccomments in the Oval Office, Trump suggested the U.S. had a fresh concrete proposal aimed at ending the \u200bwar, which is now in its fifth year. He did not, however, elaborate on what that proposal would be, nor did he say if Witkoff and Kushner would be traveling to Ukraine, Russia or both nations.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said the two men would fly \u200cto Ukraine on Sunday after \u2060visiting Moscow.<\/p>\n
“We have an idea for peace,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
“I sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two great negotiators. They’ve done a great job, \u2060and we sent them over to see whether or not we can get something done. And there may be a good chance that we’ll do it.”<\/p>\n
The duo had been planning to travel \u200bto \u200bMoscow over the weekend followed by a visit \u200bto Kyiv, two sources previously told \u200cReuters. However, the itinerary has been in flux in recent days, and the Kyiv section of the journey was still not completely certain, one of the sources said on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration’s attempts to settle the war in Ukraine have largely come to nothing, and negotiations stalled out in recent months.<\/p>\n
In late August, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe traveled \u200cto Moscow in part to press counterparts there \u200bto consider a settlement, Reuters and several other media \u200boutlets reported.<\/p>\n
Most Western intelligence officials doubt \u200bRussian President Vladimir Putin is interested in a short-term deal, while \u200cUkrainian intelligence believes he is in fact \u200blikely to escalate, rather \u200bthan de-escalate the war in the near term.<\/p>\n
A Russian drone hit the headquarters of Ukraine’s SBU security service in Kyiv on Friday in one of the most \u200bhigh-profile targets struck during the \u200cwar.<\/p>\n
Witkoff, who is effectively the lead U.S. negotiator with respect to the war \u200bin Ukraine, has traveled to Moscow numerous times but has not yet \u200bvisited Ukraine.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Gram Slattery;Editing by David Ljunggren)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gram Slattery WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13083,3739,13084,13082,1664,185,158,38,2529,3773,25,13054,1665,177,3329,26,412,41,183],"class_list":["post-37499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-donald-trumps","tag-friday","tag-gram","tag-gram-slattery","tag-jared-kushner","tag-kushner","tag-kyiv","tag-moscow","tag-peace","tag-reuters","tag-russia","tag-sept-4","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-trump","tag-u-s","tag-ukraine","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-washington","tag-witkoff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}