US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have held \u201cencouraging\u201d talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv in their first official visit to Ukraine but made no breakthrough towards ending the war with Russia. The envoys\u2019 trip followed talks with Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday which a Kremlin aide said were \u201chighly useful\u201d while also giving no indication of a breakthrough. Zelenskyy said at a news conference that his talks with the envoys on Sunday covered air defence needs \u2013 including Patriot systems \u2013 and a \u201cwinter package\u201d of support covering both air defence and energy infrastructure before the colder months. He said Kyiv was seeking \u201cserious volumes\u201d of American support on that front, with backing from European partners as well. It appeared the war would continue into winter, he also said.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy said Russia had intensified strikes on Ukrainian cities before Russia\u2019s State Duma election later this month, calling the attacks deliberate \u201cterror\u201d against civilians. Ukraine was working with 67 domestic companies developing systems to shoot down Russia\u2019s jet-powered drones at scale. He said the sides agreed to hold a follow-up meeting involving Ukraine, the US and Europe, with a location still to be set.<\/p>\n
The US envoys brought new and \u201cmore effective\u201d proposals to Ukraine on ending the war with Russia, according to one senior Ukrainian presidential official. \u201cIt\u2019s not the same as it was before. This one now is more effective,\u201d the unnamed offical told Agence France-Presse after the talks with Zelenskyy. \u201cThey\u2019re still talking. This is actually the most important part. There are three of them now.\u201d Ukraine\u2019s rail operator announced the envoys\u2019 departure from Kyiv early on Monday.<\/p>\n
Witkoff said earlier that both sides would need to compromise, adding: \u201cWe think we have the ingredients to get to that place \u2026 and we look forward to continuing this as long as it takes.\u201d Kushner said: \u201cHopefully this trip has come out with some new ways to advance forward. I think we\u2019ve learned a lot from the trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Moscow the US envoys had \u201cdiscussed substantive plans <\/a>which will be announced in the coming weeks\u201d, a White House official said. The Kremlin said the Americans had \u201cput forward a number of ideas on possible routes to a settlement\u201d, without elaborating. Witkoff said he was hopeful a new round of US-mediated Ukraine-Russia talks would be announced \u201cin short order\u201d. Putin has repeatedly said Moscow intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine while Zelenskyy insists Russia should not be rewarded for its aggression.<\/p>\n A girl \u2060was killed and three \u2060other people \u2060were wounded \u200bin a Ukraine \u2060drone attack on the Russia-held Black \u2060Sea port \u200bcity \u200cof Sevastopol \u200clate on \u200cSunday, the city\u2019s Moscow-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram.<\/p>\n Russian forces \u2060struck \u200ba \u200cUkrainian \u200ccargo vessel in \u200cthe Black Sea which was carrying \u200bmilitary equipment supplied to \u2060the Ukrainian \u200barmy by \u200bwestern \u200bcountries, Russian \u200bnews \u200cagencies \u200breported the defence ministry as saying on \u200bSunday.<\/p>\n Kyiv\u2019s forces struck the Ryazan oil refinery \u2013 about 480km (300 miles) inside Russia \u2013 causing a fire, Ukraine said on Sunday.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s foreign minister said Germany\u2019s accusation that Moscow was involved<\/a> in a \u2060drone incident near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Germany\u2019s Leipzig airport were, \u201cby and large, the \u2060start of a real war\u201d, state news \u200bagency Tass \u200creported. \u201cHe is, in effect, declaring war on us,\u201d Sergei Lavrov said of the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Berlin has ordered a series of measures<\/a> in \u200bresponse to the attack attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have held \u201cencouraging\u201d talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv in their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38353","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=38353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}