Europe will have a seat at the next round of Ukraine peace talks, and Russia and Ukraine have agreed the largest prisoner exchange of the war, after a day of shuttle diplomacy that took the American envoys from Moscow to Dublin.
Key Points
- Ukraine peace talks Europe — US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said Europe will join the next round of negotiations as a full member of the negotiating team.
- Russia and Ukraine agreed what would be the largest prisoner exchange of the war, potentially reuniting thousands of people with their families.
- The envoys spent about two hours with President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Thursday, then about an hour with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin.
- Moscow has not confirmed the European agreement, and no date or place has been set for the next round.
Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, said on Thursday that the two sides had agreed to expand the next round of talks to include European nations. “We are also working toward what would be the largest prisoner exchange of the war, potentially reuniting thousands of people with their families,” he wrote on X. Zelenskyy said the exchange would be the biggest of the war, and that Europe “will be in the negotiating team” at the next meeting.
The week began in Abu Dhabi, where direct talks between Russia and Ukraine on 10 and 11 November were the first in nine months. From there Witkoff and Kushner travelled to Moscow, where they met Putin and his negotiating team — aide Yuri Ushakov, Kirill Dmitriev and Vladimir Medinsky — for about two hours on Thursday afternoon, before flying on to Dublin to brief Zelenskyy and his chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov.
What was agreed in Moscow and Dublin
Zelenskyy, speaking at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, west of Dublin, said the process had resumed and that each meeting must deliver results. “First of all, the trilateral meeting was unblocked, and this is very important because it gives us hope that we will end this war,” he said. “The second, or perhaps the first, very important result is that the American team has also agreed that we will have an exchange of POWs. This will be the largest prisoner-of-war exchange, as Steve and Jared told me, and our soldiers will come home.”
Kushner said the envoys had finalised the prisoner exchange, and that expanding the talks would allow broader postwar European security arrangements to be tackled alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia. “We cannot conclude this deal without the Europeans being at the table,” he said. Zelenskyy had earlier put the size of the exchange at 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners on each side, though Ushakov said its parameters were still being agreed.
The European question
The European seat is not yet settled in every capital. Witkoff said Putin had agreed to let European representatives join the next round, though the Russian president also urged Washington to work with European allies to understand whether they wanted peace or war. Ushakov’s account of the same meeting contained no such agreement, saying instead that the Europeans “must decide whether they want peace or the continuation of the war.”
In Dublin, where around 40 European leaders gathered on Thursday for the ninth session of the European Political Community, the question of who speaks for Europe was still open. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the treaties give the seat to European Council President Antonio Costa and herself, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz named the E3 and a group of five, and French President Emmanuel Macron said the format “will be determined” later. Witkoff said only that another meeting is “on the schedule” — its date and place are the first marker of whether this week’s progress holds.
For background on the talks, see our report on the Abu Dhabi peace talks ending with a prisoner swap deal, and on Russia and Ukraine opening the second day of the Abu Dhabi talks. More in our World News section.
Sources: Reuters via Duke FM, “Kushner says US working toward ‘largest prisoner exchange’ of Russia’s war in Ukraine”; Le Monde, “US envoys say Europeans will be included in upcoming Ukraine peace talks”.