The US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will once again join Washington’s delegation
Washington’s delegation at the trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine talks in Geneva next week will include American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a source briefed on the matter.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the trilateral negotiations to settle the Ukraine conflict will take place on February 17 and 18 in Geneva. No Western European nations will be represented, he added.
Russia’s delegation will be headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who has already participated in several rounds of Russian-Ukrainian talks.
In a statement on Friday, Ukraine’s national security chief Rustem Umerov announced that he would again be leading Kiev’s delegation. The other members will include Vladimir Zelensky’s new chief of staff and former military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, general staff chief Andrey Gnatov, and several other senior officials.
According to Reuters, Witkoff and Kushner will attend the three-way talks as part of the US delegation in the afternoon, after participating in negotiations with an Iranian delegation that morning. Neither was present at the last round, which took place in the UAE last week. Moscow described it as “constructive but difficult,” while Witkoff noted that the diplomatic effort was gleaning “tangible results.”
According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the trilateral talks have trimmed down the range of issues between the sides.
“The bad news is they’ve been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer,” he said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
One of the biggest remaining points of contention between Russia and Ukraine is territories. Moscow has insisted that a stable peace can only be achieved if Kiev withdraws soldiers from any territories it still controls in Donbass – which voted to join Russia in 2022 – among other key demands.
Moscow had agreed to several compromises and settled on a realistic peace roadmap after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit with his US counterpart Donald Trump in Alaska last year, according to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
However, this peace drive has been systematically undermined by Kiev and its Western European backers since then, he stated on Wednesday.
