Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law, and special envoy Steve Witkoff are set to rejoin the American delegation
According to a Reuters report on Saturday that cited an informed source, the US delegation for the trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine talks in Geneva next week will feature envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Friday that the negotiations aimed at resolving the Ukraine conflict are scheduled for February 17 and 18 in Geneva. He added that no Western European countries would be participating.
Vladimir Medinsky, a presidential aide who has taken part in multiple rounds of Russian-Ukrainian discussions, will lead the Russian delegation.
In a Friday statement, Ukraine’s national security chief, Rustem Umerov, said he would once again head Kiev’s delegation. The team will also consist of Vladimir Zelensky’s new chief of staff and former military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, general staff chief Andrey Gnatov, and a number of other high-ranking officials.
Per Reuters, Witkoff and Kushner will join the three-way talks with the US delegation in the afternoon, following their participation in morning negotiations with an Iranian delegation. Both envoys were absent from the previous round of talks held in the UAE last week. Moscow characterized those discussions as “constructive but difficult,” whereas Witkoff remarked that the diplomatic initiative was yielding “tangible results.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the trilateral talks have succeeded in reducing the number of issues dividing the sides.
“The bad news is they’ve been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer,” he commented during the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
Territorial control remains one of the most significant unresolved disputes between Russia and Ukraine. Moscow maintains that a lasting peace is contingent upon Kiev withdrawing its forces from all areas it still holds in Donbass – a region that voted to become part of Russia in 2022 – along with meeting other key demands.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow had consented to several compromises and agreed upon a practical peace plan following the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska last year.
However, he stated on Wednesday that this peace initiative has been consistently sabotaged by Kiev and its Western European supporters ever since.