US envoys arrive in Moscow for Russia-Ukraine talks with Putin

The meeting with Kushner and Witkoff comes after two days of trilateral talks in the UAE yielded no breakthrough.

United States envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have ⁠arrived in ⁠Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in their latest push for a peace deal ⁠in Ukraine.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, met Kushner and Witkoff at their plane on Thursday morning and accompanied them to central Moscow.

The meeting comes on the heels of two days of trilateral peace talks in the United Arab Emirates that concluded in the capital, Abu Dhabi, on Wednesday with news of another planned major prisoner exchange but no breakthrough on ending the nearly five-year war.

The US said differences remained on major issues, including territory, but some progress had been made on post-war security guarantees.

Kyiv has strongly rejected Putin’s demands to surrender all of its eastern region of Donbas in ⁠return for peace.

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

Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said one of the goals of Thursday’s visit would be for the US team to persuade Putin to invite Europeans to the negotiation process.

“Ukraine and the US want the European partners to be involved while Moscow is adamant about talks without the Europeans, and that’s why they’ve been largely excluded from the process,” she said.

Shapovalova added that the US delegation would bring Putin an updated proposal for a peace plan and the presence of Dmitriev in the talks was an indication that they would address some of the more complex issues.

European leaders meet in Dublin

During the US-backed effort to revive talks, leaders from more than ۴۰ European countries gathered in Dublin on Thursday for a summit focused on the continent’s security.

The meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) brought together heads of state and government from 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 also attended.

The EPC was established in ۲۰۲۲ as a forum for countries both inside and outside the ۲۷-nation EU.

Zelenskyy and his European allies are expected to discuss this week’s talks in Abu Dhabi.

Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff are scheduled to meet Zelenskyy in Dublin on Friday after talking to Putin.

Audrey Macalpine, reporting from Kyiv, said Ukrainians do not believe the talks in Moscow will yield results. “Over the past two days, we saw just another prisoner exchange, which has been the case in previous talks,” the correspondent said.

“When it comes to the negotiations, not much has changed in terms of where these two sides stand,” Macalpine added. “Perhaps the biggest thing of note [in the talks] was that they took place at all.”

Meanwhile, French Minister Delegate for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad on Thursday ‌said the ⁠EU will approve more sanctions ⁠against Russia.

“On Monday, we will take new sanctions against ⁠Russia on ۱۵۰ additional ⁠entities, ۵۰ banks, and it’s ⁠France which proposed the ⁠bulk ⁠of the entities to add,” Haddad ‌told LCI television.