President Trump's two top envoys — real-estate developer-turned-diplomat Steve Witkoff and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner — landed in Moscow on Saturday for a fresh round of talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, sitting down with Russian President Vladimir Putin after being met at the airport by Kremlin investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

In a sign both sides wanted the visit to produce something tangible, Putin ordered Russian forces to halt strikes on Kyiv for three days starting at midnight Saturday, local time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky answered in kind, saying Kyiv would hold off hitting Moscow "through the end of Saturday, as well as on Sunday and Monday" and that he expected Russia to reciprocate for the length of the American visit.

A War Now Past Four and a Half Years

Saturday's sit-down marks at least the second time Witkoff and Kushner have met face-to-face with Putin since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The pair held a five-hour session with the Russian leader in Moscow this past December that produced no public breakthrough. Momentum on a broader settlement then stalled for months after the U.S. struck Iran in February, pulling Washington's diplomatic attention away from Eastern Europe.

Trump has repeatedly cast the two men — Witkoff a longtime friend who has also fronted the administration's Gaza cease-fire push, and Kushner, the president's son-in-law who negotiated the Abraham Accords in Trump's first term — as his best shot at closing a deal Washington has chased since Trump returned to office.

"WE HAVE AN IDEA FOR PEACE. I SENT STEVE WITKOFF AND JARED KUSHNER, TWO GREAT NEGOTIATORS ... AND WE SENT THEM OVER TO SEE WHETHER OR NOT WE CAN GET SOMETHING DONE."

— President Trump, on the Moscow mission

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the meeting was underway Saturday, though officials on both sides have declined to spell out what's actually on the table. Previous rounds are understood to have touched on territorial lines in the Donbas, the future of Western sanctions on Russia, and security guarantees for Kyiv — but no framework has been made public, and Saturday's strike pause applies only to the two capitals rather than front-line fighting elsewhere in Ukraine.

The envoys are expected to travel on to Kyiv as soon as Sunday to brief Zelensky directly on whatever emerged from the Putin meeting, according to reporting on the trip's itinerary. That stop will be the real test of whether Moscow and Kyiv are actually converging on terms, or simply buying a few quiet days in their capitals before the fighting resumes.

What's Next

The three-day pause on strikes against Kyiv is set to lapse Tuesday if not extended; Ukraine's reciprocal window on Moscow runs only through Monday. Diplomats in both Washington and Kyiv have been burned before — this round follows at least one previous cease-fire push that collapsed within weeks — and neither the Kremlin nor Zelensky's office has committed to extending the halt beyond the current visit. For now, residents of both capitals get a rare few days without air-raid sirens, while the two American envoys try to turn a temporary lull into something that survives past their flight home.