Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a 72-hour pause in strikes on Kyiv starting at midnight on Sept. 6. The temporary pause coincides with a visit from U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
“Putin has ordered that no strikes be carried out against Kyiv for three days, starting at midnight today,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told state media early Saturday. Ukrainian media had previously reported that its army would observe a ceasefire during the visit, though the details had not yet been finalized. "Such information did come from Ukraine,” Peskov confirmed.
Witkoff and Kushner touched down in Moscow later that day to meet with Putin and discuss ending the war with Ukraine. They are scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday.
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Both men are real estate developers whom Trump has used as envoys in high-level diplomatic talks. Kushner is also the President’s son-in-law and served as a senior adviser during his first term.
“They're bringing with them a proposal to end the war,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, calling the two “great negotiators.”
The U.S. served as a primary mediator between Russia and Ukraine in 2025 and into 2026. The envoys’ arrival represents a potential revival of that role, which largely stalled in February when Washington and Jerusalem launched joint strikes on Iran, killing the country’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and igniting an ongoing war.
Following the Kremlin’s announcement, Zelensky wrote on X that he had been in touch with the envoys and was “ready to observe a ceasefire in airstrikes against the cities involved in the negotiation process.”
“From now through the end of Saturday, as well as on Sunday and Monday, Ukraine is ready to refrain from strikes on Moscow, and we expect the Russians to do the same regarding Kyiv,” he wrote, adding that Ukraine is ready for “substantive conversation.”
Hours earlier, however, Zelensky posted about an overnight wave of Russian attacks that targeted major airports in Kyiv and Boryspil and killed five people at an industrial site elsewhere in Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched ballistic missiles and 167 attack drones in the attack.
“Clearly, these Russian strikes on the airports are a reaction to the discussions and preparations for the possibility of the U.S. side using an aircraft to travel to Ukraine and land at Kyiv Airport or Boryspil Airport,” Zelensky said.
Trump has repeatedly stated that ending the Russia-Ukraine war is a major priority of his Administration, but the reality of that aim has proven difficult.
In August 2025, the U.S. President met his Russian counterpart in Anchorage, Alaska, to pursue a ceasefire agreement. The talks proved unsuccessful, and Trump left empty-handed.
In October 2025, Trump and Putin planned to meet in Budapest in hopes of furthering peace talks. But the summit was canceled just a few days after the summit was announced after Russia indicated that its hard-line stance on the war had not shifted.
“It just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said at the time. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it.”
Strain between Trump and Zelensky also impeded progress. In February 2025, Oval Office talks collapsed within minutes when the U.S. President accused Zelensky of being “ungrateful” for U.S. aid and refusing to agree to a ceasefire without security assurances. In the 18 months since, however, that tension has largely dissipated, with Trump saying at this year’s NATO summit that the two had “actually developed a good relationship.”
The revived push for peace talks comes days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow last week and met with his Russian intelligence counterparts, a trip that Trump later called “semi-routine,” though it had not been announced to the media in advance and little is known about what transpired.
Renewed mediation comes as Ukraine continues to launch some of its largest aerial assaults of the war yet, showcasing the nation’s rapid advancement of drone and missile capabilities in recent months.
It demonstrated its growing capacity to strike deep inside Russian territory in August, with strikes landing up to 1,500 miles over the shared border—including attacks on warehouses used by the prominent online retailer Wildberries, after Kyiv said its logistics sites are being used to support the Russian military.
