Russia and Ukraine have agreed to expand negotiations to include European partners, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the U.S. president, said Thursday after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin. U.S. representatives also spoke with officials from countries including Poland, Germany and France.
“The two sides have now agreed to expand the next round of negotiations to include our European partners. This will allow us to address broader post-war European security arrangements in parallel with the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia,” Kushner wrote in a post on X. He did not say who would represent Europe.
President Trump’s envoy stressed that a lasting peace requires “credible security guarantees, incident-prevention mechanisms and mutual de-escalation commitments that will reduce the risk of future conflict.” Kushner said that after meeting Zelenskyy at the airport in Dublin, he held consultations with the national security advisers of Ukraine, Germany, Italy, the EU, France, Ireland and Poland. He did not specify the format of the consultations or who represented Poland.
The president’s son-in-law stressed that “no broader European security arrangements will be finalized without taking Ukraine’s security concerns into account.” He added that broader European security and a cessation of hostilities would be discussed in parallel, and that apart from humanitarian arrangements, “nothing will be finalized until a comprehensive agreement is reached.”
The American envoy also said work is underway on a prisoner exchange that would be the largest of this war and could “potentially reunite thousands of people with their families.” He said the negotiating tracks, timeline and further details would be announced soon.
After the meeting, Zelenskyy listed three outcomes of the week of talks. The first, he said, was a “humanitarian result,” meaning the release of prisoners in an exchange that is to be the largest since the start of the war. The second was more active involvement of European representatives “so that they can have an equal seat at the negotiating table.” “Ukraine always defends the interests of all of Europe,” he said. The third was preparation for further multilateral meetings. In remarks to the media, he mentioned that the next round would take place next week.
The meeting between the American negotiators and Zelenskyy in Dublin capped three days of negotiations. After two days of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, Witkoff and Kushner met with Vladimir Putin in Russia, then flew directly to Dublin to meet Zelenskyy, who was attending a meeting of the European Political Community there. The trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi were preceded by talks with representatives of Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, NATO and the European Commission.
In Dublin, Kushner and Witkoff argued that the talks had been very positive and fruitful. Putin and Russian representatives, however, signaled that they had not given up their territorial demands.
After the meeting in Moscow, Putin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov said the Russian leader had backed the American proposal to resolve the security issues of Russia and Ukraine by creating a European security system.
According to Ushakov, the Kremlin already presented such a proposal in 2021. He was referring to an ultimatum Moscow issued before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia demanded then, among other things, the withdrawal of NATO forces from the countries on the alliance’s eastern flank and the exclusion of any possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine and other post-Soviet states.
From Washington, Oskar Górzyński (PAP)
