US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held “encouraging” talks in Kyiv on Sunday in their first official visit to Ukraine as part of a renewed push to end more than four-and-a-half years of Russia’s full-scale invasion.The trip by the Americans follows a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, as both sides have escalated their aerial attacks. Washington’s push to end the fighting has lost momentum, with the Trump administration focused for the past six months on the Iran war.Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv. Troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250km front line.Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets US envoy Steve Witkoff on September 5 2026. Picture: (Mikhail Metzel) Following two rounds of discussion with the US officials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the goal was a “just, fair peace” that would ensure there was “never an opportunity to resume aggression against Ukraine”.He also thanked the American negotiators, who travelled by train, for coming to Kyiv, their first time in Ukraine. Zelensky said the next round of talks later on Sunday would bring in national security advisers from Britain, France and Germany.Witkoff said that he felt good about peace talks in Moscow and Kyiv, adding that the US hoped to find a diplomatic solution to the war, which is now in its fifth year.“We’ve had very meaningful discussions, substantive and important, and we’re very encouraged,” Witkoff said. Kushner said that President Donald Trump sees it as important “not just to figure out how we end the current war, but how we create the conditions for durable peace”.A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak publicly, said that much of the discussion was focused on “how to get through the winter and what can be done before then”.Saturday’s meeting in Moscow lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without any major developments being announced. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, described the talks as constructive, frank and useful, but he didn’t discuss specific outcomes.While Moscow offered its “comprehensive assessment” of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, Ushakov said, the talks weren’t purely focused on the war in Ukraine.“Economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail,” he said.The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was in January when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin.Putin and Zelensky had agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks took place. Still, the two traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said.Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and wounded at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, wounding seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region.Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that it intercepted 82 drones out of the 108 launched by Russia overnight, with six missiles.In Russia, a man was killed and a woman was seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.The Russian defence ministry said on Sunday that its air defences overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the waters of the Black and Azov Seas.In Kyiv on Sunday, dozens gathered for a nationwide 9am moment of silence honouring Ukraine’s fallen soldiers, a daily ritual held in cities countrywide.Nataliia Lipei, 67, whose son Viktor was killed in December 2022, was among those who attended. Despite a health condition, she has travelled from city to city to take part, and she said that she hopes the talks in Moscow and Kyiv will finally bring an end to the war.“I hope these steps and these meetings will definitely produce results, because there has been so much bloodshed and so many deaths here that we have to stop all of this,” Lipei told Associated Press.Not everyone shared her hope for the talks. Oleksandr Pastukhov, a 27-year-old video editor who joined the commemoration, was sceptical that the envoys’ visit would change anything.“We’ve already seen delegations like this come here before,” he said. “We’ve seen this so-called ceasefire for three days, which ended after just a couple of hours, and now we’re supposed to naively think that two people will come and change something.”“We need an agreement that will never be broken,” said Svitlana Kurylenko, a 19-year-old cafe worker.“Just leave Ukraine alone and let people live in peace.”In his Sunday prayer, Pope Leo XIV renewed his appeal for peace in Ukraine and said he hopes the negotiations will bring results.“I hope that the efforts undertaken in recent days to resume negotiations will bear concrete fruit and make way for diplomacy,” he told the gathered faithful in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican.Update: September 6 2026This story has been updated with the latest information.