Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to meet Putin in Moscow on Ukraine talks

Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, will meet President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow on Thursday to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, and will travel with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, officials said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr. Witkoff said he was "quite optimistic" and that "we are at the end now," remarks he made to an audience there. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said the meeting was scheduled to take place "after 7 or 8 p.m." local time in Moscow (11 a.m. or noon Eastern).

Mr. Witkoff said he and Mr. Kushner would not stay overnight in Moscow and would travel to Abu Dhabi for meetings with working groups handling components of the proposed peace plan, including "military-to-military" aspects and "prosperity," or postwar economic recovery. He said he had held fruitful meetings in Davos with Ukrainian negotiators and that he and Mr. Kushner had met in Davos and previously met in December with Mr. Putin and with Kirill Dmitriev, who has been involved in the talks.

Kyiv has said it agreed to "90 percent" of the proposed peace deal, but issues of territory and security guarantees remain unresolved. Mr. Witkoff said he believed "we've got it down to one issue" and called it solvable, but he did not elaborate; the Moscow meeting follows an expected meeting in Davos between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Key Topics

World, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Vladimir Putin, Moscow, Ukraine