Donald Trump’s negotiating duo have been embarrassed by Vladimir Putin just after they gave a bootlicking masterclass in Russia.
The president, 80, sent Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to try to negotiate the beginning of the end of the Kremlin dictator’s war in Ukraine.
But just 48 hours after they bent the knee in Moscow, and less than a day after they landed in Kyiv, Russian airstrikes killed at least two people and wounded seven in Ukraine’s capital.
The strikes hit Kyiv on Tuesday morning, city authorities said, after both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had ordered a pause in fighting so Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner, and his special envoy, Witkoff, could hold separate talks with each leader.
After they packed their bags and departed, a wave of strong explosions rocked the capital, damaging a five-story apartment block and setting vehicles on fire in two different districts.
Kyiv Mayor and former pro boxer Vitali Klitschko said people were trapped inside a residential building. Russia’s barrage included Oniks anti-ship missiles, Iskander-M and S-400 systems, North Korean-made KN-23 ballistic missiles, 32 Kh-101 cruise missiles and 166 Shahed attack drones, more than half of them jet-powered. Ukraine’s air defenses said they destroyed or suppressed 175 of the incoming targets by 8:30 a.m.
Witkoff and Kushner had earlier called the trip a breakthrough weekend. After Sunday’s talks in Kyiv, the pair said they’d held “meaningful discussions” and were “very encouraged,” though Witkoff acknowledged both sides would need to make “compromises” to end the war, now more than four-and-a-half years old.
A senior Ukrainian official, speaking anonymously because he wasn’t authorized to talk publicly, told The Associated Press much of the discussion centered on “how to get through the winter and what can be done before then.”
Ukrainians had earlier been angered by a comment the pair made. Kushner, in Kyiv for the first time, told reporters he pined for the earlier days of trilateral talks, when “everyone was speaking in Russian to each other.”
“We were discussing these issues in a very extra-friendly manner, all in Russian,” he said. He also seemed happy to speak about Putin’s thinking, telling reporters, “From President Putin’s perspective, I think he has certain objectives he expresses that he wants to achieve.”
Witkoff, meanwhile, was caught on camera gushing to the Russian leader that their talks would rank among the “incredible memories” of his career, telling Putin it “will be right at the top of it all.”
A Ukrainian reporter pressed Witkoff on his warmth toward the Kremlin war machine, asking if he was “ashamed to sit at the same table with an international war criminal.”
Witkoff brushed it off with a lecture on the value of “relationships,” insisting, “We’ve always been treated respectfully by President Putin and his team.”
Trump had sent his envoys off with high hopes, telling reporters before their trip that the U.S. had “an idea for peace” and that “there may be a good chance that we’ll do it.”
