Two days of US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine ended without a breakthrough; the US envoys will brief Putin, then Zelensky.
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, and US envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin after two days of talks in Abu Dhabi on ending the war in Ukraine ended without a clear breakthrough, according to a CNN report carried by Egypt Independent. Kushner announced the trip at a news conference in the UAE capital on Wednesday, 11 November, saying the envoys saw openings on some of the issues discussed. CNN noted that Kushner holds no official role in the administration.
Kushner said the pair would try to finalise humanitarian relief and prisoner releases and press to bring European countries into the negotiations, a multilateral format Moscow has so far resisted. They also plan to go to Dublin to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the proposals from Abu Dhabi.
The negotiators' accounts were mixed. Russia's lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the sides had reached understanding in some areas but not others, and gave little sign that Moscow's demands had shifted. Ukraine's chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, pointed to progress on security issues, while another Ukrainian negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, described the round as one of the hardest he had attended since 2022.
A day earlier, Zelensky told reporters in Copenhagen that he was very happy with what he was hearing from the US envoys, The Korea Herald reported, carrying Reuters. He said the agenda in Abu Dhabi included a new security architecture for Europe, an idea Russia's foreign minister had raised, and that Kyiv was treating it cautiously because it had not seen what the Americans and Russians had discussed. The Abu Dhabi meeting was the first three-way round since February.
