MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump's envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are in Moscow today for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Then they'll move on to Europe to meet with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And their goal will be to see if they can make more headway on U.S. efforts to end Russia's war with Ukraine following two days of talks between the two sides in Abu Dhabi.
MARTIN: NPR's Charles Maynes is in Moscow to tell us more. Good morning, Charles.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So let's start with these peace talks in Abu Dhabi. Did they achieve anything?
MAYNES: Well, these negotiations were the first since February, and they delivered just one concrete result. Russia and Ukraine agreed to what's been billed as the largest prisoner exchange so far in the war. That's, of course, good news, but it's not why the U.S. got these two sides together. The goal here was and is much bigger.
MARTIN: Well, how so?
MAYNES: Well, the U.S. entered into these talks saying it wanted to explore a new long-term security arrangement between Russia and Europe, believing that that could unlock concessions from both Kyiv and Moscow to end the actual fighting. And so that really was the focus in Abu Dhabi, all the more so because negotiations over ceasefires and other concessions have really gone nowhere, as Kushner noted after the talks.
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JARED KUSHNER: The reality is there's no trust right now between the sides, and that's to be expected after a conflict like this.
MAYNES: So he's really just trying something new.
MARTIN: And do we have a sense of how Russia's responding to all this?
MAYNES: Well, this is a conversation the Kremlin has been demanding because, at least from President Putin's perspective, the war in Ukraine has always been about relitigating the end of the Cold War. It's about establishing buffer zones against NATO's expansion, and that really means a new approach to European security. Russia's lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, in Abu Dhabi used this rather colorful metaphor.
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VLADIMIR MEDINSKY: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: So here he says that the whole body of European security is sick and needs curing, and calling Ukraine a cyst that had burst to the point where a Band-Aid wouldn't help. Now, Medinsky went on to add that in some areas, Russia and the U.S. had found some common ground. Clearly, it didn't include territorial concessions. After the talks, he told Russian media that, quote, "every inch of our land" would be returned one way or another, so not exactly signaling flexibility.
MARTIN: And what are the Ukrainians saying to all this?
MAYNES: Well, they were upbeat because in these conversations is something Ukraine's also been after - security guarantees against any future Russian incursion, although we don't have details. What we do know is that going into these talks, U.S. officials were exploring Article 5-like guarantees for Ukraine from the U.S. That's a reference to NATO's collective security defense, which, if it happened, would be a huge deal. The catch - Moscow's already rejected the idea of a NATO-like status for Ukraine, just as it rejects Ukraine's full membership in the alliance.
MARTIN: OK. So let's turn to the Moscow visit. What exactly are Witkoff and Kushner hoping to do?
MAYNES: Well, Kushner said they want to brief Putin directly and convince him to include Europeans in these discussions, which are, after all, about European security. Now, European governments are clearly nervous about a deal being cut with Moscow over their heads, so much so they sent envoys to Abu Dhabi to get updates from the U.S. and Ukraine on the sidelines. And some European leaders are expected to join Kushner and Witkoff when they meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ireland. That's likely to happen tomorrow. But Russia's been really dismissive about the idea, given Europe's military support for Ukraine. How dismissive? Well, Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, compared the Europeans in Abu Dhabi to tourists hanging out in the hotel lobby.
MARTIN: Wow. That's NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow. Charles, thank you.
MAYNES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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