{"id":1047025,"date":"2026-09-06T14:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T14:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1047025\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T14:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T14:16:15","slug":"us-envoys-arrive-in-ukraine-after-meeting-with-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1047025\/","title":{"rendered":"US envoys arrive in Ukraine after meeting with Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) \u2014 U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held talks in Kyiv on Sunday in their first official visit to Ukraine as part of a renewed push for peace more than 4\u00bd years after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The trip by the Americans follows a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> in Moscow on Saturday, as both sides have escalated their aerial attacks.<\/a> Washington\u2019s push to end the fighting has lost momentum, with the Trump administration focused for the past six months on the Iran war<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones<\/a>, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life<\/a> in Kyiv. Troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometer (775-mile) front line. <\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that his government is ready for a \u201cconstructive\u201d discussion with the U.S. emissaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are interested in bringing the end of the war closer. Peace is needed. Security guarantees are needed. A just and sustainable postwar peace is needed. Our proposals are prepared,\u201d Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram.<\/p>\n

The envoys arrived by train and were welcomed at the station in Ukraine\u2019s capital by high-ranking Ukrainian officials, before being met by Zelenskyy at a ceremony in St. Sophia Square.<\/p>\n

A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Sunday afternoon that two rounds of discussion had taken place with the U.S. officials, and that a third meeting with French, German and U.K. representatives was planned. <\/p>\n

Much of the discussion was focused on \u201chow to get through the winter and what can be done before then,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

No breakthroughs in Moscow talks<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s meeting in Moscow lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without any major developments being announced. Putin\u2019s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, described the talks as constructive, frank and useful, but he didn\u2019t discuss specific outcomes.<\/p>\n

While Moscow offered its \u201ccomprehensive assessment\u201d of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, Ushakov said, the talks weren\u2019t purely focused on the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law, was in January when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin. <\/p>\n

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Russia and Ukraine continue to exchange fire<\/p>\n

Putin and Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other\u2019s capitals while the talks take place. Still, the two traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said.<\/p>\n

Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and wounded at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, Ukraine\u2019s State Emergency Service said. <\/p>\n

In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, wounding seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region. <\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s air force said Sunday that it intercepted 82 drones out of the 108 launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles. <\/p>\n

In Russia, a man was killed and a woman was seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.<\/p>\n

The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the waters of the Black and Azov Seas.<\/p>\n

Mixed hopes on the ground<\/p>\n

In Kyiv on Sunday, dozens gathered for a nationwide 9 a.m. moment of silence honoring Ukraine\u2019s fallen soldiers, a daily ritual held in cities across the country. <\/p>\n

Nataliia Lipei, 67, whose son Viktor was killed in December 2022, was among those who attended. Despite a health condition, she has traveled from city to city to take part, and she said that she hopes the talks in Moscow and Kyiv will finally bring an end to the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope these steps and these meetings will definitely produce results, because there has been so much bloodshed and so many deaths here that we have to stop all of this,\u201d Lipei told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Not everyone shared her hope for the talks. Oleksandr Pastukhov, a 27-year-old video editor who joined the commemoration, was skeptical that the envoys\u2019 visit would change anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already seen delegations like this come here before,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this so-called ceasefire for three days, which ended after just a couple of hours, and now we\u2019re supposed to naively think that two people will come and change something.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his Sunday prayer, Pope Leo XIV renewed his appeal for peace in Ukraine and said he hopes the negotiations will bring results.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that the efforts undertaken in recent days to resume negotiations will bear concrete fruit and make way for diplomacy,\u201d he told the gathered faithful in St. Peter\u2019s Square at the Vatican.<\/p>\n

___ Associated Press journalists Volodymyr Yurchuk and Yevhenii Ocheretianyi in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow the AP\u2019s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine (AP) \u2014 U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held talks in Kyiv on Sunday in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1047026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[64,69,10850,40783,57,2055,3464,6087,17966,37593,13342,24531,50,80,3417,3658,3657,13226,273,3660,67,370,132,68,274,3656,96,93,107,77429],"class_list":["post-1047025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-drone-warfare","tag-france-government","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-international-agreements","tag-iran-war","tag-jared-kushner","tag-kyiv","tag-military-technology","tag-moscow","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-russia-government","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-government","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news","tag-yuri-ushakov"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117224524393679947","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1047026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}