The president’s son-in-law turned peace negotiator, Jared Kushner, is catching heat for asserting that Ukraine should just give up in Russia’s war against it.
Kushner said the only thing missing from an agreement to end Russia’s war is Ukrainian consent to give up the territories that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has demanded to take over.
“President Putin’s laid out his line of what he wants to achieve. If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously we have the rest of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right now does not want to do that,” Kushner said, calling into the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv.
He added that “obviously, our job as the mediators [is] to figure out how can we come up with a creative solution that doesn’t violate their desires and that helps them achieve their objective, and does in a way that we can get Russia to end the conflict in a way that hopefully allows both parties to move forward in a framework where this doesn’t happen again.”
He also avoided mentioning that Russia has been the main aggressor in the war, asserting that both Kyiv and Moscow are experiencing “a lot of pain” and both have “a lot of desire” to end the war.
“At least for now, they [the Russians] are saying the right thing, which is they want to discuss a way to resolve this in a way,” Kushner said. “President Zelensky is very committed to this, from what we’ve seen. From what we heard, President Putin is very committed to this as well. We have to find the right formula that hopefully works for everyone to advance it forward.”
When he remarked that Putin is “very committed” to negotiations to end the war Russia started, those in attendance at the forum burst out laughing, according to local media.
Kushner, the billionaire businessman married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was put in charge of Russia-Ukraine negotiations alongside Trump’s former golf buddy, Steve Witkoff, at the start of Trump’s second term. While Trump repeatedly asserted that he would end the conflict within one day of becoming president, little progress has been made.
He and Witkoff visited Moscow and Kyiv earlier this month as they try to revive negotiations in the conflict. Every proposal from Moscow to end Russia’s war includes some form of Ukrainian territorial concession, which Kyiv has repeatedly said it is not willing to agree to.
Zelensky told reporters after the meeting in Kyiv that he believed “the war will continue” into the winter.
Kushner’s comments also came as Russian drones attacked a crossing point on the Polish-Ukrainian border Sunday morning. The crossing is a popular route for foreign dignitaries to take to get to Ukraine.
The Russian attacks here come as intelligence agencies have been warning that Russia appears to be planning a direct attack on a NATO member country.
