US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks with President Vladimir Putin as part of the latest push for a peace deal in Ukraine
The pair were met at Vnukovo Airport by Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev amid wet snow.
Images showed them exchanging handshakes and greetings before heading into the city.
Their visit follows two days of US-mediated trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, the first such direct discussions in nine months.
Those talks ended without a clear breakthrough on major issues but included progress on a planned prisoner exchange.
Kushner said earlier that the US had seen “some openings and some opportunities” and that the Moscow meeting would aim to make further progress. One goal is to seek Putin’s blessing for European representatives to join future discussions on the continent’s postwar security architecture.
The envoys were due to meet Putin later on Thursday before flying to Dublin to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Nearly five years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has maintained maximalist demands on territory and security guarantees, while Kyiv has rejected calls to surrender the entirety of the Donbas region.
US mediators have sought to shift focus toward humanitarian issues, reconstruction and long-term security arrangements amid continued fighting.
