DUBLIN — Russia and Ukraine have agreed to expand the next round of peace talks to include European nations, U.S. envoy Jared Kushner said on Thursday, after a day of shuttle diplomacy that took President Donald Trump’s envoys from the Kremlin to a military airfield outside Dublin.
Kushner and fellow envoy Steve Witkoff met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, then flew to Ireland to brief President Volodymyr Zelensky at Baldonnel airfield. “We cannot conclude this deal without the Europeans being at the table,” Kushner said, according to Le Monde. Zelensky told reporters that all sides had accepted that Europe will get a seat at the negotiating table, and that the next exchange of prisoners would be the biggest of the war, calling the swap a real result.
According to Reuters, Kushner said Washington is working toward the war’s largest prisoner exchange, and that expanding the talks would let negotiators address broader post-war European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Russia and Ukraine. Zelensky’s own figure, given a day earlier, was 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners on each side, though the parameters were still being agreed, according to Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov.
Moscow’s account was cooler. Ushakov confirmed that trilateral talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States would continue, but appeared to play down the European element. “They are making every effort to get involved in the negotiations, but, as our president has said, they need to decide whether they want peace or a continuation of the war,” Ushakov said, according to CNN. In the Kremlin meeting, Putin said Russia had never objected to dialogue with Europe and said he wanted a peace that is, in his words, eternal, according to CNN.
The week’s talks in Abu Dhabi, the first direct round in nine months, ended without a breakthrough on a ceasefire, territory or security guarantees, and the Russian delegation refused any discussion of a ceasefire on current front lines, according to EA WorldView. Zark News reported the Abu Dhabi round and the envoys’ Moscow trip on Thursday; the Dublin briefing is the new development, and it changes the shape of the negotiation by adding the continent where the war is being fought.
Who exactly will sit in Europe’s seat is unresolved. More than 40 European leaders ended a summit of the European Political Community in Dublin on Thursday without naming a representative. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the treaties give the seat to European Council President Antonio Costa and herself, while other leaders floated the E3 format of France, Germany and Britain, according to the Silent Dossier’s account of the summit.
What happens next is a date. Witkoff said another meeting is on the schedule but gave no time or place. Ushakov said Putin and Trump will continue discussions at a planned bilateral meeting at the APEC summit in China. Until a date is set and Europe names its negotiators, Thursday’s agreement is a framework, not a breakthrough, and the war, now in its fifth year, continues on the ground.
Sources: Reuters, via KWSN; CNN; Le Monde.
