Witkoff and Kushner meet Zelensky after talks with Putin, as Ukraine says Starshield restricted again

US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff arrived in Ireland late on Thursday to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on their earlier Moscow talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The trips follow two days of talks in Abu Dhabi between Russian, Ukrainian and American negotiators – the first of their kind since February – which ended without a breakthrough.

Zelensky told reporters in Dublin after the meeting that the talks over the past days had been very important.

“It gives (us) hope that we will end this war, that after this meeting will be another meeting and each meeting has to give a result and bring us closer to this,” he said.

Speaking alongside Witkoff and Kushner on Thursday night, Zelensky also said a recently agreed prisoner of war exchange would be the biggest since the start of the war, calling the swap “a real result.”

Kushner added that some “really incredible” post-war security plans for Ukraine were being worked on, and that the deal could not be concluded without Europeans at the table. He later posted to X saying that both sides had “agreed to expand the next round of negotiations to include our European partners.”

Earlier, just before the US envoys departed Moscow, Witkoff had told CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen at Vnukovo Airport: “I think progress was made. I think it was made earlier today. People didn’t think that we were going to restart trilateral. We’ve restarted it. We’ve set a new meeting.”

“This is what President Trump wants to see,” he added.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov — while confirming that trilateral talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the US would continue — had earlier appeared to play down the suggestion that European representatives would join them.

“They are making every effort to get involved in the negotiations, but, as our president has said, they need to decide whether they want peace or a continuation of the war. So far, all their practical actions point precisely to the latter,” Ushakov said.

The diplomacy comes as Zelensky warns of reoccurring disruptions to Starshield – a military-grade version of Elon Musk’s Starlink service that is critical to Ukraine’s military operations. He said Thursday the service had faced “significant disruptions” in recent days, hampering Kyiv’s ability to shoot down Russian drones.