US special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff huddled with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday and said they left optimistic that they could move the peace process forward.
Page A2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 7 September 2026
Envoys meet Putin, tell Kyiv it's 'encouraging,' one day after being warned that's the whole point
As it ran on the front
Steve Witkoff called it "encouraging." Jared Kushner said they "really feel good." Witkoff himself used the phrase "good resolution" on Sunday, hours after the two of them sat down with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, and there is no reason to read those words as anything but exactly what they say. This is a peace process moving forward, and "encouraging" is the honest word for a process moving forward. It is the correct word. I would use it myself, if the sequence were different.
The sequence is not different. Sunday's "encouraging" sit-down with Zelensky came a day after Witkoff and Kushner met Vladimir Putin in Moscow — the New York Times has them arriving in Kyiv "a day after talks with Putin in Moscow." The Washington Examiner had already told its readers what a Moscow visit would do: on September 4, one day before that meeting, the paper's own editors wrote that Putin doesn't want peace and that the envoys' visit "will only enable his propaganda." That is the specific charge, printed by a paper that otherwise says the envoys "deserve praise." One day between the warning and the meeting it warned about. The meeting happened anyway.…
…(cont) So "good resolution" needs a resolution to point to. What's actually on the table? Ukrainian foreign policy aide Ihor Zhovkva said, in March 2022, that Kyiv would discuss neutrality if it came with security guarantees, so long as no territory changed hands. That is the only figure on the public record from the Ukrainian side, and today's wire does not carry an update to it. "Encouraging" describes a mood in a room. It does not describe a number on paper. Witkoff has a mood. He does not, in anything filed today, have a number.
Call it "substantive," call it "important" — Witkoff's words too, from that same Sunday. Call it whatever the room wants. A meeting with Putin, followed a day later by warm words about the process Putin just sat through, is what the Examiner's warning described before it happened: enabling his propaganda. Not a coincidence. What the warning said it would be.
“They shake hands with Putin Saturday and by Sunday they're telling Zelensky it's "encouraging" — nobody's updated Ukraine's actual ask since some aide said it back in 2022, neutrality for guarantees, no land given up. A mood in a Kyiv hotel room isn't a number on paper, and the only paper anybody's shown us is four years old. Call it whatever the envoys want, the guy paying for this war with his kid's future doesn't get a "good resolution," he gets a press release.”
“"Encouraging" is just the accurate word for diplomats leaving a room feeling good, that's not spin, that's — okay, they did just come from Moscow, from Putin, so maybe "encouraging" is doing some work there I didn't — no, forget I said that. Witkoff's confident in a "good resolution," and if the Examiner's own side warned three days — one day, it was one day before — warned this exact trip would only hand Putin a megaphone, well, then I guess that's what it did. That's not the talking point. Scratch that one too.”
The receipts
Special envoy Steve Witkoff on Sunday said the U.S. is confident that trilateral talks will result in a "good resolution" to the Ukraine war after he and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with officials in Kyiv. Sunday marked Witkoff and Kushner's first time traveling to Kyiv to negotiate an end to Russia's yearslong war...
The president’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said they had “encouraging” talks with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on Sunday to help end the Russia-Ukraine war. Speaking with reporters, Witkoff described the latest round of peace talks as “substantive”
After meeting Putin, President Trump's envoys are expected to discuss a proposal to end the war in Ukraine.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met on Sunday with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, a day after talks with Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow.
· Putin doesn’t want peace. Witkoff and Kushner’s visit will only enable his propaganda from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Ukrainian foreign policy aide Ihor Zhovkva says that Ukraine is open to holding talks discussing Russia's demand of Ukraine's neutrality as long as Ukraine is given security guarantees. However, Zhovk from the morgue, 9 Mar 2022
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.