Witkoff-Kushner Moscow Visit Yields No Breakthrough — SkimNews
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- Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and Kyiv as Trump's envoys, meeting Vladimir Putin personally for a considerable time, but both sides acknowledged no immediate breakthrough while eyeing future trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US.
- Russia's demands hardened: genuine Ukrainian neutrality with no Western military presence, retention of occupied territories, Ukrainian withdrawal from remaining Donbas, a cap on army size and weapons types, disbanding far-right units, lifting Russian-language restrictions, and elections allowing Russia-friendly parties to compete.
- Russia's economic campaign against Ukraine has shut down grain and ore exports through Odesa ports and is methodically destroying logistical hubs, retail warehouses, and large-scale industry from metallurgical plants to beverage factories.
- CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow a week before the Witkoff-Kushner trip but was refused an audience with Putin, instead meeting only the heads of the FSB and SVR security agencies before heading home.
- Ukraine faces compounding crises including a political turmoil from corruption scandals involving officials close to Zelenskyy, a turf war between security agencies, a $26 billion gap in the defense budget, and the approach of winter threatening energy and water infrastructure.
- The land-swap arrangement once considered as compensation for Ukrainian withdrawal from Donbas is now off the table, as Russia's position has become less open to compromise following Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil facilities.
Why it matters: Trump wants concrete progress on peace before the midterm elections and is pressing Putin to limit military cooperation with Iran, yet his envoys entered talks just as Russia intensified its destruction of Ukraine's export economy — a $26 billion defense gap and winter approaching leave Kyiv with dwindling leverage and dwindling public tolerance for continued fighting.
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