EditAnalysis: What the Kyiv talks actually produced
The Kremlin has an interest in appearing open to a new trilateral format Russia-U.S.-Ukraine even if it is not
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner finally came to Kyiv. Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been asking for that visit since last year. By Witkoff’s own count, he had already flown to Moscow eight times.
They arrived together: Trump’s special envoy for talks with Russia, and the president’s son-in-law. From the outside it could look as if Kushner had become the main channel to the Ukrainian side. In practice both men speak for the same position – a position Kyiv now praises in public, and which is still not a pro-Ukrainian one.
Not every detail of the visit was flattering. Witkoff and Kushner refused to visit sites of Russian strikes, even when they were a block away. They also flew to Moscow first, and did not hold back compliments for the man in the Kremlin.
Everyone still talks about stopping the war “this year.” Nobody actually believes it. The realistic American assignment is narrower: restore a trilateral negotiating format with Russia. Public comments already suggest a Ukraine-Russia-United States meeting could happen soon. A leaders’ summit is not on the table.
Ukraine’s negotiating team argues that a return to the “troika” is in Kyiv’s interest. Even if the war does not end by the close of winter, the format can still deliver practical results. The thaw also carries a hidden risk. For Putin, it is useful right now to simulate readiness to talk – and to derail the Graham-Blumenthal sanctions bill in the United States. That may be one reason Moscow has suddenly become more “peaceful.”
Whose side are Witkoff and Kushner on?
Witkoff’s reputation in Ukraine is settled. Last year he backed Russian initiatives on Ukraine with little disguise. His trips to see Putin – sometimes without the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and with a Kremlin-supplied interpreter – became a case study in how Washington can play toward the aggressor.
Criticism at home later forced a partial change. The secretary of state and national security adviser Marco Rubio were brought into decisions more often. That did not mean Trump had lost confidence in Witkoff, or in Witkoff’s style with Moscow.
The weekend meetings confirmed it.
Witkoff’s on-camera remarks to Putin were as fawning as they come. He said he was delighted by their conversations and called them the best memories he could take into retirement. It would be a mistake to treat that as a sudden revelation. It is how this administration works: no principles, no convictions – only interests. American officials say so openly, and take pride in it.
Kushner spelled out the method at the Kyiv press conference. Trump comes from business, he said. In business, people look for a deal in which every side walks away with a profit. War is a negative-sum game; everyone loses. That is why the American visitors smiled through talks with Ukrainian officials and accepted a gift: T-shirts with the joke slogan “Kyiv regime.”
Talks about “peace” with no belief in success
The visit’s most revealing protocol choice was what the guests refused to do. They did not lay flowers at the Wall of Remembrance on Mykhailivska Square. They would not visit strike sites in Kyiv. Time was not the problem. A trip to Lukianivka on a Sunday, with streets already closed, would have taken minutes. The Americans were inside St. Sophia; the SBU building hit the day before was a short walk through a side gate of the reserve.
Their idea of “neutrality” ruled it out.
The stated purpose of the Moscow–Kyiv shuttle is mediation toward peace, or at least a durable ceasefire. The central fact is simpler: almost no one believes Putin is ready to stop the war. European Pravda’s sources say Bankova [the office of the President] understands that Putin intends to fight at least through the winter. Zelenskyy said as much after the Sunday meetings: he discussed with his guests how to operate if the war lasts all winter.
Even Kushner, who should have been selling Trump’s optimism, would not say the war could end before winter. “With any deal there is never certainty… But if you don’t have a dialogue, nothing will happen,” he said.
So why return to the process at all? Why intensify contacts?
Moral arguments, international law, and justice do not move this White House. Political self-interest is also mixed. The November 2026 midterms matter enormously to Trump. On paper, his administration should want distance from the Ukraine file. Early this year Washington said so, repeatedly, in public.
There is still a strategy for a partial success. Trump’s representatives have now described the scenario they want.
Why Ukraine wants the troika back
At the Kyiv press conference, Witkoff and Kushner ducked every question about a leaders’ meeting. That was expected: there is no answer. They were far more eager to talk about a three-way format.
Kushner said it would make sense to return to the trilateral talks of six months ago, and that he hoped for progress “very soon.” He also admitted a side benefit for Washington: the format lets the United States shift responsibility onto Kyiv and Moscow, and therefore off itself — especially if there is no result.
“When we held trilateral talks, Steve and I liked it much more, because everyone spoke to each other,” Kushner said. “We didn’t have to explain the Ukrainian position to Russia and the Russian position to Ukraine. They talked to each other. They spoke Russian, in a very friendly atmosphere. I think that was productive. So we hope to return to that format.”
They gave no date.
Zelenskyy backed the track. “We need to do everything so that trilateral meetings happen, or so that the format is a trilateral meeting plus European partners. We’ll see what Russia agrees to,” he said. The Kremlin has not commented in public.
European Pravda’s interlocutors in Ukraine’s negotiating group are convinced the troika serves Ukraine as well as the United States. Washington hands off some responsibility – but it does not leave Kyiv alone.
One official recalled how the earlier process actually worked. “The value of the trilateral format we had was that the Americans were sincerely and deeply involved. They didn’t just sit in the meetings. They worked. They generated proposals. In the military subgroup, for example, General Grynkewich himself took part” – the commander of NATO’s Allied Command Operations.
The warning from Kyiv is not to inflate expectations. Russia intends to keep fighting, whatever the diplomatic wrapping. “Will the trilateral format be effective? It will certainly be more effective than bilateral talks. Will it produce real peace? Not by the end of winter. But we have to use every opening,” the source said.
Kyiv also hopes active talks will create room for tactical deals. Previous three-way meetings produced large prisoner exchanges. Officials privately hope for “de-escalation measures, such as a reduction in the intensity of strikes.” And though Ukraine does not say so in public, Moscow may eventually – including under pressure from the few partners it still has – come to talks on Black Sea navigation.
The hidden danger in the trilateral track
Russia may have a different reason to play along.
The Kremlin has an interest in appearing open to a new format even if it is not. That may explain why Moscow is showing engagement now, even as Putin rules out a ceasefire in the coming months.
The window is short: ten to twelve days.
In that period, Washington will decide whether to activate a new sanctions instrument against Russia – the Graham-Blumenthal bill. The Senate has passed it. The House can act only into mid-September. After that, Congress heads into elections and is unlikely to pass a bill of this kind before the end of the current term.
If the House does not pass the sanctions law in the plenary week that runs to 18 September, the process starts over next year.
Putin’s task for the next two weeks is therefore political, not diplomatic: persuade American legislators that Russia is constructive, ready to deal, and already at the table.
What the White House thinks is unknown. Zelenskyy and European Pravda’s sources say the issue did not come up in Kyiv – logically enough, since Witkoff and Kushner have no mandate to discuss Congress. A possible signal is that an aide to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent travelled with them; Treasury handles Russia sanctions, among other things. That is not proof. Sanctions are not Treasury’s only brief.
What follows is ten days of hard fighting over the sanctions bill.
Europe is back in the room
One feature of the visit was unambiguously good. The Kyiv meetings included not only Americans and Ukrainians but the national security advisers of the so-called European three: Germany, France and Britain.
Their presence was close to the biggest win of the talks.
Until now the United States had been sceptical of a European role and preferred to talk to Kyiv and Moscow on its own. Ukraine, backed by European capitals, has insisted that Europe’s security cannot be settled without Europeans.
If this is more than a one-off change in American tactics – if it is a new attitude toward European partners – it is a real shift.
Zelenskyy proposed bringing European representatives into the trilateral talks with Russia as well. For now it is only an idea. He noted that Moscow has not agreed.
Ukraine justified the European presence in language Trump understands: money. In Kyiv, the Europeans assured Trump’s envoys they were ready to finance extra “winter” purchases in the United States – and not only of weapons.
“We are counting very much on a winter package, which I discussed in detail today with Steve and Jared, and with our European partners,” Zelenskyy said. “We are counting on that support – air defence and energy support. We are counting on a serious volume and on the possibility of using American liquefied gas.”
U.S. gas as part of the Ukraine–Russia track is a new idea. How large the offer might be, and whether Washington wants it, is unclear. Ukraine has prepared reasonably well for this winter and already pumped substantial volumes into underground storage.
Even as politics, bringing Europe into talks with Russia is the right step, and one Ukraine has backed for a long time. Unlike the United States, which advertises its detachment, Europeans have a stake in a durable peace Ukraine can live with. Their presence is a plus.
The test is whether formats with Europeans in the room become normal practice – or only a courtesy for the first visit of Trump’s representatives to Kyiv.
Based on the original article in Ukrainian by Sergiy Sydorenko, editor of European Pravda
Caption: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (R), US Special Envoys for Peace, Steve Witkoff (C) and Jared Kushner (L), leave their joint press conference at the Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, 06 September 2026. The US envoys arrived in Kyiv for talks with the Ukrainian president and his team, one day after their visit to Moscow. EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO
Updated: September 8, 2026 - 06:23
