US Peace Envoys Reach Moscow for Talks with Putin as Ukraine Negotiations Stall

The meeting between Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and the Russian president follows two days of trilateral talks in the UAE that ended without a breakthrough.

Published On 12 Nov 202612 Nov 2026

US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, marking the latest American effort to secure a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, greeted Kushner and Witkoff as they disembarked on Thursday morning and escorted them into central Moscow.

The visit follows two days of trilateral peace talks in the United Arab Emirates, which wrapped up in the capital, Abu Dhabi, on Wednesday. While the discussions produced news of another planned prisoner exchange, they yielded no breakthrough on ending the nearly five-year conflict.

Washington acknowledged that significant differences persist on core issues, most notably territory, though it pointed to some headway on post-war security guarantees.

Kyiv has firmly rejected Putin’s demand that it cede the entire eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace.

The Abu Dhabi negotiations represented the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the US in nine months.

Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova said a key aim of Thursday’s visit would be to persuade Putin to bring European representatives into the negotiating process.

“Ukraine and the US want the European partners to be involved, while Moscow insists on talks without the Europeans, and that is precisely why they have been largely kept out of the process,” she said.

Shapovalova added that the American delegation would present Putin with a revised peace plan proposal, and that Dmitriev’s involvement signalled the talks would tackle some of the thornier issues.

European Leaders Convene in Dublin

As the US-led push to revive negotiations continued, leaders from more than 40 European nations gathered in Dublin on Thursday for a summit dedicated to the continent’s security.

The gathering of the European Political Community (EPC) brought together heads of state and government from across the European Union and other European countries, including the United Kingdom. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte were also in attendance.

The EPC was launched in 2022 to serve as a forum for dialogue among nations both within and beyond the 27-member EU.

Zelenskyy and his European counterparts are expected to weigh in on this week’s discussions in Abu Dhabi.

Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff are set to meet Zelenskyy in Dublin on Friday following their talks with Putin.

From Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Audrey Macalpine reported that Ukrainians hold little expectation that the Moscow talks will produce meaningful results. “Over the past two days, all we saw was another prisoner exchange, which has been the pattern in previous rounds of negotiations,” the correspondent said.

“When it comes to the negotiations themselves, very little has shifted in terms of where the two sides stand,” Macalpine added. “Perhaps the most notable thing about the talks was simply that they happened at all.”

Meanwhile, French Minister Delegate for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad said on Thursday that the European Union would move forward with additional sanctions against Russia.

“On Monday, we will adopt new sanctions targeting 150 additional entities and 50 banks, and it was France that proposed the majority of the entities to be added,” Haddad told LCI television.

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