By Bosphorus News Geopolitics Desk
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner took President Donald Trump's latest Ukraine peace proposal first to Moscow on September 5 and then to Kyiv on September 6, holding more than three hours of talks with Vladimir Putin before opening two rounds with Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian officials.
No breakthrough was announced in either capital. Washington has not published the proposal carried by the two envoys, while Moscow and Kyiv have disclosed no agreement on Donbas, security guarantees for Ukraine or the timing of another leaders' meeting.
The Kyiv leg widened as British, French and German national security advisers joined the consultations. Witkoff called the discussions substantive and important and said the US delegation was encouraged by what it heard.
The mission also arrived after months of Turkish contacts with the same American mediators. Ankara had been speaking separately with Moscow and Kyiv, discussing the war directly with Witkoff and Kushner and, more recently, developing a proposal aimed at protecting commercial navigation in the Black Sea.
Moscow Holds Its Line
Witkoff and Kushner met Putin in Moscow on September 5 for more than three hours, in talks Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov later described as constructive, frank and highly useful. Nothing announced afterward suggested that Moscow had moved away from the position it brought into the meeting.
Putin acknowledged the difficulty of the task as the talks opened.
"The situation is, of course, not simple, and we have to deal with it today," he told the US envoys.
Ushakov provided the fuller account afterward, saying Putin had pointed to Russian gains on the battlefield, expressed confidence that Moscow would achieve its objectives and again insisted that any settlement address what Russia calls the "root causes" of the conflict.
Moscow has long used that phrase for the broader political and security conditions it says must be resolved before the war can end. The Kremlin account gave no indication that Putin had softened those demands during the discussions.
Trump had said beforehand that Witkoff and Kushner were bringing new ideas for peace to Moscow, but neither Washington nor the Kremlin disclosed what those ideas contained.
The conversation also reached beyond the immediate war file. Ushakov said economic cooperation and possible joint projects were discussed, while Gene Lange, a US Treasury official involved in sanctions work, joined preparatory contacts with Russian investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev before the meeting with Putin.
Lange did not take part in the Putin talks. His presence placed a senior Treasury sanctions official inside the preparations surrounding the mission, but there is no evidence that Washington offered sanctions relief as part of Trump's proposal.
From Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Kyiv.
Kyiv Turns to Guarantees and the Winter Ahead
The envoys met Zelensky on September 6 in their first visit to the Ukrainian capital in their current mediation role. At least two US-Ukrainian rounds followed before the format broadened to include British, French and German national security advisers.
Zelensky said Ukraine wanted a just and lasting peace that would prevent Russia from returning to war, keeping security guarantees at the center of Kyiv's position.
A senior Ukrainian official told the Associated Press that a significant part of the discussions concerned how Ukraine could get through the coming winter and what might realistically be achieved before then, placing immediate wartime needs alongside the larger questions of territory, guarantees and a final settlement.
The public result was still limited. No formula emerged for Donbas, no security guarantee package was released and Kyiv did not disclose whether it had accepted Trump's proposal, rejected it or sought changes.
Nor did the diplomatic push amount to a general ceasefire. Fighting and strikes continued elsewhere while the talks were under way.
Türkiye Had Been Talking to the Same Envoys
The Moscow-Kyiv mission entered a diplomatic field in which Ankara had already been active for months.
On January 23, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said he had met Witkoff and Kushner in Davos shortly before they traveled to Moscow and had urged the two American mediators to be "a little more creative."
In the same interview, Fidan identified Donbas as the main remaining lock in the negotiations and said he had been discussing the Ukraine file with Witkoff from the beginning of the process, placing Ankara inside the American mediation channel well before this weekend's Moscow-Kyiv mission.
The contact continued through the summer. On July 16, Fidan said Türkiye had heard the Russian side's views during his Moscow visit and subsequently shared its own analysis with American counterparts involved in mediation, while continuing to relay its observations to both sides.
Eight days earlier, Trump and Zelensky had discussed Ukraine peace diplomacy directly in Ankara during the July 8 NATO summit. The Ukrainian Presidency said the two leaders considered ideas that could strengthen Ukraine's position and bring peace closer, without disclosing their substance.
There is no evidence that Türkiye drafted the proposal now being carried by Witkoff and Kushner or transmitted it between Moscow and Kyiv. The documented link is that the same US envoys now moving between the two capitals had already been discussing the war with Ankara while Türkiye maintained direct access to both sides.
Türkiye Pushes a Black Sea Track of Its Own
Türkiye's most concrete initiative has developed outside the territorial negotiations, around the security of grain shipments and commercial traffic in the Black Sea.
On August 31, Fidan said Ankara had prepared a plan for the safe passage of grain through the Black Sea and was discussing it with both Russia and Ukraine. Türkiye, he said, was seeking another arrangement similar to the 2022 grain deal if conditions allowed.
The effort forms part of a broader attempt to contain the war's spillover into civilian shipping, examined in Bosphorus News' analysis of the Russia-Ukraine conflict spreading across the Black Sea and Caspian.
Erdoğan met Putin in Bishkek on September 1 and later told journalists that the two leaders had discussed the Russia-Ukraine war in a productive and unusually candid meeting.
"Both President Putin and we hope to see the war between Russia and Ukraine brought to a peaceful end as soon as possible," Erdoğan said, adding that Türkiye had told the Russian leader it was ready to do what it could in support of a peace process.
The conversation also covered attacks on civilian shipping. Erdoğan said Türkiye's concern went beyond Turkish-flagged or Turkish-operated vessels and extended to commercial maritime traffic across the Black Sea.
"There is a need for a mechanism that will permanently ensure the security of commercial maritime transport in the Black Sea," Erdoğan said.
He also warned that the damage was mounting and that the grain crisis was again becoming visible, particularly in Africa, arguing that action was needed before the problem deepened.
The proposal followed Ankara's earlier work on a Black Sea moratorium and merchant-shipping security track.
Four days later, Witkoff and Kushner were across the table from Putin in Moscow.
The sequence does not establish coordination between Ankara and Washington. There is no public evidence that Erdoğan prepared the ground for the US mission or that Türkiye carried Trump's proposal. Ankara had, however, already been talking to the same US intermediaries, to Moscow and to Kyiv, while developing a separate Black Sea security initiative of its own.
What the Shuttle Has Not Resolved
The shuttle has put Washington back into direct movement between Moscow and Kyiv without yet showing that the hardest positions have narrowed.
Moscow gave no public sign of stepping back from its established demands, while Kyiv described its talks positively but disclosed no agreement on Donbas, territorial control or security guarantees. The participation of British, French and German advisers added a European layer to the Kyiv leg without producing a publicly announced common formula.
What follows will be more revealing than the language used after this round. Another technical meeting, a leaders' summit or a narrower arrangement before winter would show whether the September 5-6 diplomacy altered the negotiating ground.
For now, Trump's envoys have taken his undisclosed proposal through meetings in Moscow and Kyiv, while Türkiye entered the round with months of documented contact already established with the same American mediators and a Black Sea security track of its own.
Sources: Ukrainian Presidency, Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Türkiye Directorate of Communications, Kremlin, Reuters, Associated Press, Axios, Bosphorus News reporting and review