By Olena Harmash
KYIV, Sept 8 (Reuters) – U.S. peace negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner presented several “decent ideas” during talks on how to end the war with Russia, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday.
Witkoff and Kushner visited both Russia and Ukraine over the weekend and held several hours of talks with Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But the meetings failed to deliver a breakthrough on how to end the war, now in its fifth year.
Zelenskiy told reporters in a WhatsApp media chat that he planned to meet U.S. President Donald Trump later in September and aimed to discuss a winter air defence support package.
“As for the peace package that Kushner spoke of, and the new ideas – I can tell you that there were really some very decent, worthwhile ideas,” Zelenskiy said.
He gave no further details, saying that Kyiv agreed with the U.S. envoys to work on them first.
Ukraine and Russia remain far apart in their visions on how to end the war. A key issue is the fate of the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in the eastern Donbas region, which Moscow has claimed as its own but has failed to capture despite years of fierce fighting.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war have been stalled for months, and Zelenskiy said he was grateful to the United States for its efforts to revive diplomacy.
He said that Ukrainian, U.S. and European representatives would meet in the near future to prepare for a trilateral meeting.
The next such meeting could be hosted by Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, or other countries. Zelenskiy expected grain shipments and energy infrastructure to be discussed there, among other issues, adding that Ukraine was ready for a compromise.
He said that there was also a need to continue talks on exchanges of prisoners of war to increase and speed them up.
“We need not just to discuss, but to achieve concrete results,” Zelenskiy said.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa, Olena Harmash; Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Cawthorne)
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