US envoys reach Kyiv after Putin talks as Russia-Ukraine attacks intensify

Kyiv,UPDATED: Sep 6, 2026 16:16 IST

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Kyiv on Sunday on their first official visit to Ukraine, in a renewed push for peace after Russia's full-scale invasion. Their visit came a day after they met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for more than three hours in an effort to revive peace talks, even as aerial attacks by both sides intensified.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready for a "constructive" discussion with the US representatives. "We are interested in bringing the end of the war closer. Peace is needed. Security guarantees are needed. A just and sustainable postwar peace is needed. Our proposals are prepared," he said in a post on Telegram.

Washington's efforts to end the fighting have lost momentum, with the United States focused for the past six months on the Iran war. The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, was in January, when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin.

Saturday's meeting in Moscow ended without any announced breakthrough. Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov described the talks as constructive, frank and useful, but did not give details of any outcome. He said Moscow had offered its "comprehensive assessment" of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, while adding that the discussions were not limited to the war. "Economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail," he said.

The air war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified as troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometre front line. Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the sound of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv. Putin and Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other's capitals while the talks were taking place, but officials said the two sides still exchanged fire overnight into Sunday.

Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and injured at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, according to Ukraine's State Emergency Service. In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people. In the Khmelnytskyi region, a drone damaged an apartment building and injured seven people. Ukraine's air force said on Sunday that it intercepted 82 of the 108 drones launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles.

In Russia, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said a man was killed and a woman was seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle. The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that its air defences had shot down 258 Ukrainian drones overnight over 14 Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.

In Kyiv, dozens of people gathered on Sunday for the nationwide 9 am moment of silence honouring Ukraine's fallen soldiers, a daily ritual observed across the country. Among them was 67-year-old Nataliia Lipei, whose son Viktor was killed in December 2022. Despite a health condition, she has travelled from city to city to take part and said she hoped the talks in Moscow and Kyiv would help end the war. "I hope these steps and these meetings will definitely produce results, because there has been so much bloodshed and so many deaths here that we have to stop all of this," she said.

Others were doubtful. Oleksandr Pastukhov, a 27-year-old video editor who joined the commemoration, said he was sceptical that the envoys' visit would make a difference. "We've already seen delegations like this come here before," he said. "We've seen this so-called ceasefire for three days, which ended after just a couple of hours, and now we're supposed to naively think that two people will come and change something." As the diplomatic effort resumed, the fighting continued on both sides, underlining the difficult path to any peace settlement.

With PTI Inputs

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