United States envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, carrying the results of two days of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi to the Kremlin.

The envoys were greeted at Vnukovo airport by Kirill Dmitriev, President Putin's special envoy, amid wet snow. It is the tenth time Mr. Witkoff has met Mr. Putin in person; Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said the meeting would focus on a cessation of hostilities.

What Abu Dhabi produced — and what it did not

The visit follows two days of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between Russian, Ukrainian and American negotiators — the first direct meeting between the two sides in nine months — which closed on Wednesday with agreement on a large prisoner exchange but no ceasefire and no breakthrough on ending the war. Mr. Kushner called the exchange the biggest humanitarian release of the conflict, with the final numbers to be settled on Thursday.

Speaking after Wednesday's talks, which lasted less than two hours, Mr. Kushner said the Moscow meeting would finalise plans for more humanitarian relief and prisoner releases, and push to bring European governments into the negotiating format. "We see some openings and some opportunities there," he said.

That ambition faces resistance. Ukraine has long argued that Europe should sit at the main negotiating table, but Moscow has resisted the idea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called European involvement "not a promising approach", and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no contacts between the Russians and EU representatives took place in Abu Dhabi.

Zelensky waits in Dublin

After Moscow, the envoys fly to Dublin to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is on an official visit to Ireland. Mr. Zelensky said Washington would have to return with concrete proposals after its contacts with the Kremlin, while doubting that Mr. Putin would be willing to make progress.

Mr. Zelensky also warned on Thursday of renewed disruptions to Starshield — the military-grade version of Elon Musk's Starlink service that is critical to Ukraine's military operations — saying "significant disruptions" in recent days had hampered Kyiv's ability to shoot down Russian drones. "These are not random errors but systematic speed restrictions," he said.

War grinds on despite the diplomacy

The diplomacy has brought Ukraine no respite on the battlefield. Moscow launched a ballistic missile and drone attack overnight into Thursday; in Kyiv a drone struck a nine-storey residential building, killing a 44-year-old woman. Strikes on the power grid have left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in eastern Ukraine, and the capital faces rolling blackouts.

Thursday's meetings are the next test of whether the Abu Dhabi opening leads anywhere. If the envoys return from the Kremlin with movement on territory or security guarantees, the peace process could gain its first real momentum in months. If not, the prisoner exchange — humanitarian relief, not a settlement — will stand as the only fruit of a week of diplomacy in a war now approaching its fifth year.