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US peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to visit Kyiv and Moscow this weekend, armed with a “proposal to end the war,” US President Donald Trump has announced, in the latest push to break a diplomatic deadlock over the war in Ukraine.
“I sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two great negotiators. They’ve done a great job, and we sent them over to see whether or not we can get something done. And there may be a good chance that we’ll do it,” Trump told reporters on Friday.
The pair are expected in Moscow on Saturday before heading to Kyiv on Sunday, in what will be their first visits to the Ukrainian capital since Trump returned to the White house in January last year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the planned visit to Ukraine in a post on X.
“We need to look for real options for how to move this war toward an end,” Zelenskyy wrote. “We will see what proposals Steve and Jared bring and what they are told in Moscow in response”.
He added that Ukrainian forces would ensure the “normal functioning of Russian airspace” to ensure the envoys could make the trip to Moscow safely.
Zelenskyy had warned airlines and insurers on Tuesday that Russian airspace would “effectively be closing” due to the scale of Ukrainian drone operations making flying unsafe.
But the Ukrainian leader said Ukraine would hold off on strikes while Witkoff and Kushner made the trip, while calling on Moscow to do the same.
“We are looking out for them, not for Russia. There will be no air strikes from our side, and Russia must do the same, ensuring there are no air strikes from its side for the time needed to hold these talks and handle the logistical matters related to this American visit,” he wrote on social media.
Russian strikes kill four overnight
The announcement came as Russian strikes on the city of Kamianske in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region killed four overnight, per local authorities.
Oleksandr Hanzha, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, said five people were also injured in the strikes, which hit an industrial facility.
On Friday, Zelenskyy announced that a Russian drone had also hit the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in central Kyiv, adding that it had been “aimed directly” at the head of the agency’s office.
In response to the attack, he said he had ordered the SBU to carry out an “appropriate, tangible response and, where possible, one that mirrors this strike.”