Trump's peace envoys to visit Moscow and Kyiv over weekend, reports say — SkimNews
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- Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will visit Moscow on Saturday to meet Putin and then travel to Kyiv on Sunday for talks with Zelensky, according to Axios citing US officials.
- The Kyiv stop would be the envoys' first visit to Ukraine, though both have traveled to Russia multiple times; Russia's Tass agency reported the trip is set for September 5-6.
- A Russian drone hit the office of SBU security chief Oleksandr Poklad in Kyiv on Friday, prompting Zelensky to publicly order an "adequate" response from the security service.
- Putin told an international economic forum on Thursday that there are "chances" of a peace deal but showed no sign of dropping his maximalist demands, including further territorial concessions from Ukraine.
- Kyiv and its European allies have repeatedly rejected Putin's terms as tantamount to capitulation, with Russia currently controlling about 20% of Ukrainian territory since its February 2022 full-scale invasion.
Why it matters: The Moscow-then-Kyiv sequencing puts the Trump administration in the position of carrying Putin's terms directly to Zelensky, while Friday's drone strike on the SBU chief's office shows battlefield pressure is advancing in parallel with — not pausing for — diplomacy. With Putin holding maximalist demands and European allies backing Kyiv's rejection, the gulf between the two sides appears as wide as ever despite the envoys' first Ukraine visit.
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