US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of their latest push for a peace deal in Ukraine. The Kremlin talks, expected to take place in the first half of the day, will be the 10th time Witkoff has met Putin in person. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's special envoy, met the pair off their plane amid wet snow and accompanied them to central Moscow.

The talks follow two days of trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi, which finished on Wednesday with news of another planned major prisoner exchange but no public breakthrough in the wider negotiations. The Abu Dhabi talks were the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the US in nine months, and although Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reported some progress, the US side said differences remained on major issues, including territory. Despite public optimism from US President Trump, there has been no sign of major compromises.S1S2

The core obstacle is territory. Kyiv has strongly rejected Putin's demands that it surrender the whole of the eastern Donbas region in return for peace. With talks deadlocked on land, US mediators have tried to steer discussions towards postwar security guarantees and reconstruction. A senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday that Moscow could conclude non-aggression pacts with NATO member states as part of a new security architecture for Europe, though many European politicians oppose any discussion of Europe's overall security before real progress on Ukraine, including a ceasefire, is made.S1S2