MOSCOW — Donald Trump’s two Ukraine envoys will continue their mediation work and remain ready to travel to Moscow, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said Saturday after Vladimir Putin and Trump spoke by phone.
Ushakov said Trump “reaffirmed his readiness to facilitate a fast end to hostilities and the search for peaceful solutions to overcome the crisis.” His special representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, “will continue their mediation efforts and are ready to come to Moscow at a convenient time,” the Kremlin aide told reporters. The formulation keeps the timing formally in Moscow’s hands while keeping the offer standing.
A Moscow visit by Witkoff has occurred previously. The willingness to repeat it signals that the bilateral channel is not only a phone-call framework but one Washington will sustain with direct on-the-ground engagement in Russia, regardless of where NATO summit diplomacy in Ankara heads next week. Kushner’s continued inclusion alongside Witkoff reflects the administration’s two-track envoy model: a formal presidential representative alongside a family adviser whose channel carries less official accountability and, in practice, more flexibility.
What the two envoys will bring to Moscow, or when the visit might happen, was not specified in Ushakov’s briefing. The Kremlin has outlined the conditions it considers necessary for a genuine settlement, and the Witkoff-Kushner visits are the mechanism through which Moscow tests whether Washington is moving toward those conditions or not.
Ukraine was not party to Saturday’s call and has not endorsed the Witkoff-Kushner format. Kyiv has consistently maintained that any settlement must be negotiated with Ukrainian participation, not arranged between Washington and Moscow for Kyiv to accept afterward. The military front in Konstantinovka, where Russia has been pressing its advantage in Donetsk, is the backdrop against which these conversations continue — a reminder that the diplomatic calendar and the military situation move independently, and that Moscow has little operational incentive to decelerate the latter while the former proceeds.
What the next Witkoff-Kushner trip to Moscow will contain, what Moscow will offer in response, and whether anything produced between the envoys and Russian officials will be disclosed before Kyiv is consulted are the questions Saturday’s readout left open.
