Zelenskiy says Ukraine team to meet Witkoff and Kushner Friday
Kyiv's delegation plans to press Washington on air defence as European negotiators are expected to join the US-Ukraine track in the coming days.
Published
Zelenskiy said a Ukrainian team will meet Witkoff and Kushner in the US on Friday. He said he expects European negotiators to join the talks in the coming days, and that the Ukrainian team will raise air defence with the two US officials.
Ukrainian negotiators are due in the US for talks on Friday and Saturday. Zelenskiy has said Kyiv cannot negotiate peace with Russia and discuss future business opportunities at the same time.
The air defence request follows a week of heavy strikes. On Wednesday, Russia hit Ukraine's energy grid in one of the war's largest attacks, killing nine. On Monday, Moscow's mayor said 650 Ukrainian drones targeted the Russian capital region overnight, and Russia's defence ministry said it had struck data centres in major Ukrainian cities. On Tuesday, Trump said the war is getting closer to ending but that the US still has to "finish it off."
Friday's meeting had already been flagged; what is new is the detail. Raising air defence directly with Witkoff and Kushner follows Ukraine's repeated complaints of strained aviation and ammunition shortages against Russian drones, and folding Europe into the US-Ukraine track answers a concern Bessent raised earlier, that Europeans have stayed on the sidelines of substantive talks. None of it closes the gap between the process and the battlefield. Moscow has offered no reciprocal signal and continues to call conditions for talks "not ready."