US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff held a fresh round of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a day after the latest discussions aimed at ending the war in Ukraine wrapped up in Abu Dhabi.
The pair are now flying to Dublin to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Witkoff said a new round of trilateral talks had already been agreed with Putin.
But in a sign of further tension, Zelensky said on Thursday morning that Ukraine’s military was again facing “systematic” restrictions to Starlink’s military-grade satellite service, Starshield, meaning Kyiv was struggling to intercept Russian jet-powered drones.
The peace talks in the Emirates were framed as being centred around European security arrangements in a post-war scenario, although a resolution to the war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 still appears distant.
Comments by both President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin officials suggest that Russia’s position on the war has not shifted, and that Moscow’s demands for territory and neutrality continue to far exceed what Ukraine is prepared to consider.
Witkoff said that Europeans would join the next round of talks. “They are our partners and it’s important to us that they take part,” Witkoff told Russian state TV after meeting Putin in the Kremlin.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham had said that UK national security adviser Jonathan Powell would join Zelensky, Witkoff and Kushner for talks in Dublin, but Downing Street later said they had been delayed, meaning the national security adviser could no longer join.
Earlier on Thursday, Zelensky said Ukraine was trying to clear up the Starlink situation with the American side but added “some things” were already clear: “If someone in America is making decisions that basically treat Ukrainian territory as if it is not Ukrainian, then this tells us where things are going.” He did not elaborate further.
Starshield was developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company for government and military use. Along with Starlink, it has come to play a vital role in facilitating communication on Ukraine’s front line. A similar issue with connectivity affected the front line in late October and lasted about a week before it was fixed and it remained unclear who had ordered the temporary restrictions.
Zelensky said the current disruption had been ongoing for several days and was “helping the Russians kill more Ukrainians and carry out more accurate strikes against Ukraine”.
Meanwhile, some of the longstanding roadblocks in the peace process were addressed during the US-Russia talks in the Kremlin.
The territorial issue continues to be a key point of contention, Putin said.
“For us there is only one line of demarcation: the line of the state border. Because then it will be clear that we are here, and you are there. As soon as we start discussing ‘grey zones’… arguments immediately start and any agreements become unstable. And there will be no lasting peace.”
He also suggested organising a humanitarian truce to allow for the evacuation of hundreds of civilians from a frontline area, on the model of last month’s ceasefire in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky.
Putin suggested a similar five-day ceasefire for Kostyantynivka, a contested front-line Ukrainian city in the eastern region of Donetsk.
Kyiv disputes that Russia fully holds the town, and a truce could help Moscow’s troops to make a final push to seize it.
“Considering that they brought in equipment and rotated troops in Oleshky under the guise of a humanitarian operation, it’s clear what they want in Kostyantynivka,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Dmitry Lytvyn told the BBC, adding that the details would need to be “clarified”.
But at the core of this week’s talks has been the issue of European security architecture. Earlier Kushner said the US hoped to “create a new framework” of security between Ukraine, Russia and Europe that could “secure lasting peace”, while Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said it was “clear that the current system does not work.”
Ukraine and Europe have long been concerned about the current US administration’s commitment to European security and its softening towards the Kremlin and that decisions about their continent could be made without them.
Zelensky said he found the US approach of discussing a new European security order with Russia “a bit strange”.
“It is a significant shift in the US position that the US has now taken on board the Russian demand that the European security architecture needs to be discussed and agreed upon in parallel with the Ukraine peace talks,” said the Director of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute Kristi Raik.
She said the Russians have a “long history” of wanting to revise European security architecture, intended as core principles “like sovereignty, territorial integrity, the principle that there is no use of force to some conflicts”.
Russia “has long looked to reduced Nato presence on the Eastern flank and that… get some kind of veto rights in decisions concerning European security and defence,” Raik said. “And that’s where it gets even more difficult to imagine that there could be an agreement between the Europeans and the Russians.”
On Thursday, Putin again repeated that the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine was “unacceptable” to Russia, and said Russia would like the Americans to engage with Europe “so that the Europeans can decide what they truly want: peace or war”.
During the first years of the war, Europeans cut communications with the Kremlin and refused to engage with Russia directly.
That position has now shifted for many as concern that decisions about the European continent could be made without European involvement.
Kushner also urged Europe to “identify one person to speak on their behalf” in the negotiations.
Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas told the BBC’s Newshour programme the presence of a European official at the next meeting showed the Kremlin had “now realised that Europe is a big player here because we are the ones who have been supporting Ukraine”.
With financial pressures on European budgets, Kallas said it was “becoming harder to help Ukraine”, but warned of the “the danger not only for the eastern flank of the European Union but actually for our whole continent” if Russian aggression was allowed to continue.
The Kremlin has not confirmed the make-up of next week’s talks, and at the start of the meeting, Putin had indicated he didn’t want European countries to play a full role. The Russians have long cited Europe’s support for Kyiv as an obstacle to their involvement.
Speaking to Kushner and Witkoff, Putin said he was encouraging them “to work with your European allies so that they finally decide whether they want peace or war in Ukraine.”
