US envoys Witkoff and Kushner meet Putin in Moscow ahead of Friday talks with Zelenskyy in Dublin

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks with President Vladimir Putin on a Ukraine peace deal, after two days of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi that agreed a large prisoner exchange without a breakthrough. According to Russian media, Putin thanked US President Donald Trump for organising the contacts and spoke of progress on the humanitarian track; the envoys are due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin on Friday.

Kyiv has rejected Moscow’s demand that it give up the whole of the Donbas region, and US officials said differences remain over territory, with some progress on post-war security guarantees, Al Jazeera reported.