KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to arrive in Kyiv on Sunday in their first visit to the Ukrainian capital as part of a renewed push for peace in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The visit follows a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, in an attempt to revive peace talks during escalating aerial attacks by both sides.
Washington’s push to end the fighting has lost momentum, with the United States focused for the past six months on the Iran war. The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was in January when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin.
Saturday’s meeting in Moscow lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without announcements of any breakthroughs. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, described them afterward as constructive, frank, and useful but didn’t discuss specific outcomes.
While Moscow offered its “comprehensive assessment” of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, Ushakov said, the talks were not purely focused on the war in Ukraine.
“Economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail,” he said.
The air war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified as troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometer (775-mile) front line. Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv.
Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks take place. Still, the two traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said.
Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and injured at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, injuring seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Sunday 82 drones out of the 108 launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles, were intercepted.
In Russia, a man was killed and a woman seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, occupied Crimea and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.
