President Donald J. Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy near Dublin on Thursday evening, hours after their talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Afterward, Mr. Zelenskyy said the next Russia-Ukraine prisoner exchange would be the largest of the war.
“It will be the biggest, Steve and Jared told me, the biggest exchange of war prisoners yet,” Mr. Zelenskyy told reporters at a joint briefing with the two envoys, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The meeting took place at Casement Aerodrome, a military air base in Baldonnel, west of Dublin, where Mr. Zelenskyy was attending the European Political Community summit. Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s lead negotiator, also took part.
Mr. Kushner called the session “a very good discussion” and described the envoys’ talks with Mr. Putin earlier in the day as “very detailed and productive.” He said the Russian leader had agreed to let European representatives join the negotiations. Mr. Putin, he said, is “willing to give it a try.”
Mr. Zelenskyy said the Europeans would sit directly on the negotiating team at the next meeting rather than hold separate talks. “They will have a voice. This is important to us, because the war is in Europe,” he said.
Mr. Witkoff said President Trump is determined to end the war and that another round of talks has already been scheduled, the Azerbaijani news agency APA reported. He did not give a date or a location. Mr. Zelenskyy said the negotiators would meet again in the near future.
Mr. Kushner also spoke about plans for Ukraine’s reconstruction after the war, calling them “really incredible.” “The potential of Ukraine is incredible,” he said.
The Dublin meeting capped three days of U.S.-led diplomacy. Talks among American, Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi ended on Wednesday with an agreement on a large prisoner exchange, and the envoys spent about four and a half hours with Mr. Putin in Moscow on Thursday before flying to Ireland.
