Moscow

The meeting with Kushner and Witkoff comes after two days of trilateral talks in the UAE yielded no breakthrough.

United States envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have ⁠arrived in ⁠Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in their latest push for a peace deal ⁠in Ukraine.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, met Kushner and Witkoff at their plane on Thursday morning and accompanied them to central Moscow.

The meeting comes on the heels of two days of trilateral peace talks in the United Arab Emirates that concluded in the capital, Abu Dhabi, on Wednesday with news of another planned major prisoner exchange but no breakthrough on ending the nearly five-year war.

The US said differences remained on major issues, including territory, but some progress had been made on post-war security guarantees.

Kyiv has strongly rejected Putin’s demands to surrender all of its eastern region of Donbas in ⁠return for peace.

The Abu Dhabi talks were the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the US in nine months.

Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said one of the goals of Thursday’s visit would be for the US team to persuade Putin to invite Europeans to the negotiation process.

“Ukraine and the US want the European partners to be involved while Moscow is adamant about talks without the Europeans, and that’s why they’ve been largely excluded from the process,” she said.

Shapovalova added that the US delegation would bring Putin an updated proposal for a peace plan and the presence of Dmitriev in the talks was an indication that they would address some of the more complex issues.

European leaders meet in Dublin

During the US-backed effort to revive talks, leaders from more than 40 European countries gathered in Dublin on Thursday for a summit focused on the continent’s security.

The meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) brought together heads of state and government from the European Union and other European countries, including the United Kingdom. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also attended.

The EPC was established in 2022 as a forum for countries both inside and outside the 27-nation EU.

Zelenskyy and his European allies are expected to discuss this week’s talks in Abu Dhabi.

Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff are scheduled to meet Zelenskyy in Dublin on Friday after talking to Putin.

Audrey Macalpine, reporting from Kyiv, said Ukrainians do not believe the talks in Moscow will yield results. “Over the past two days, we saw just another prisoner exchange, which has been the case in previous talks,” the correspondent said.

“When it comes to the negotiations, not much has changed in terms of where these two sides stand,” Macalpine added. “Perhaps the biggest thing of note [in the talks] was that they took place at all.”

Meanwhile, French Minister Delegate for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad on Thursday ‌said the ⁠EU will approve more sanctions ⁠against Russia.

“On Monday, we will take new sanctions against ⁠Russia on 150 additional ⁠entities, 50 banks, and it’s ⁠France which proposed the ⁠bulk ⁠of the entities to add,” Haddad ‌told LCI television.

Moscow will host the 2030 World Weightlifting Championships – the first time an Olympic federation has chosen to stage a global event in Russia since the country’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) announced its decision on Sunday, four months after confirming Russian athletes would again be eligible to compete in its events.

In July, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provisionally lifted a suspension on the Russian Olympic Committee.

That suspension had been imposed following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

The IOC’s subsequent decision potentially opened the way for Russian athletes to compete for their country at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

The IWF announced the host cities of four world championships at junior, youth and senior levels, awarding the 2029 senior event to Ahmedabad in India.

“All the bids we received were excellent and we are sure that the championships in your respective countries will be a huge success,” said IWF general secretary Jose Quinones.

No world championships in an Olympic sport, summer or winter, have been held in Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The 2025 World Aquatics Championships, initially awarded to the Russian city of Kazan, were instead moved to Singapore.

Moscow has not held the World Weightlifting Championships since 1983.

The Russian Weightlifting Federation said: “[We are] the first Olympic sports federation to succeed in bringing a top-level official competition back to the country in many years.”

Federation president Aleksandr Vinokurov thanked the IWF in a post on Telegram “for their trust”, with the championships also serving as a qualifying event for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, Australia.

“Russia has all the necessary experience and capabilities to host competitions of the highest level,” he said.

“Moscow has repeatedly staged major international sporting events and has modern infrastructure.”

In announcing its decision in July to provisionally lift Russia’s suspension, the IOC said that no decision had been taken on whether Russia could display their flag, colours and anthem at the Olympic ‌Games.

The IOC said it would continue to “not organise IOC events in Russia or invite Russian government or state officials to its events”.

Some Russian athletes competed at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games and this year’s Winter Olympics in Milan as neutrals.

Ukraine filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) requesting that the IOC decision to lift its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee be annulled.

The IOC’s move decision came after the International Paralympic Committee had already ended Russia’s exile from global sports events, with the country’s athletes allowed to compete under their national flag at the Winter Paralympics.

Five Ukrainian athletes are listed to compete in the 2026 IWF World Championships in Ningbo, China, which are scheduled to take place from 27 October to 8 November.