US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held “encouraging” talks in kyiv on Sunday on their first official visit to Ukraine as part of a renewed push to end more than four and a half years of Russia’s large-scale invasion. The Americans’ trip follows a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, as both sides have stepped up their airstrikes. Washington’s push to end the fighting has lost momentum, and the Trump administration has focused for the past six months on the war with Iran. Russia has recently been using drones powered by fast-flying aircraft, and the recurring wail of air raid sirens has become part of daily life in kyiv. Troops have struggled to advance along the 1,250-kilometer (775-mile) front line. After two rounds of talks with U.S. officials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the goal was a “just peace” that would ensure “there will never be a chance to resume aggression against Ukraine.” He also thanked the American negotiators, who traveled by train, for coming to kyiv, their first time in Ukraine. Zelenskyy said the next round of talks on Sunday would bring together national security advisers from Britain, France and Germany. “We’ve had a very meaningful, substantive, important discussion, and we’re very encouraged,” Witkoff said. 2:02 Russian attack in kyiv kills 5 people as Ukraine uses British-made drones for large-scale attacks. Kushner said President Donald Trump sees it as important “not just to figure out how to end the current war,” but how to create the conditions for lasting peace. Get daily national news Get daily Canadian news delivered to your inbox so you never miss the day’s top stories. A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said much of the discussion focused on “how to get through the winter and what can be done before that.” No progress in Moscow talks 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 did not discuss specific results. While Moscow offered its “comprehensive assessment” of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, Ushakov said, the talks did not focus exclusively on the war in Ukraine. “Economic issues and potentially large and mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and the United States were discussed in considerable detail,” he said. The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, was in January, when they also held talks with Putin in the Kremlin. Continue exchanging firePutin and Zelenskyy had agreed to pause attacks on each other’s capitals while talks take place. Still, the two exchanged gunfire overnight Sunday, officials said. Russian strikes in multiple regions of Ukraine killed one person and injured at least 10 others overnight Sunday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and injured three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, injuring seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region. Ukraine’s air force said Sunday it intercepted 82 of the 108 drones launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles. 1:58 Ukrainian drones attack Russian online retailer, Russia strikes back More on the world More videos In Russia, a man was killed and a woman was seriously injured when a Ukrainian drone crashed into a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said. The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones in 14 Russian regions, the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula and the waters of the Black and Azov seas. Hopes found on the ground In kyiv, dozens of people gathered Sunday for a nationwide moment of silence at 9 a.m. to honor Ukraine’s fallen soldiers, a daily ritual held in cities across the country. Nataliia Lipei, 67, whose son Viktor was murdered in December 2022, was among those who attended. Despite his health, he has traveled from city to city to participate and said he hopes the talks in Moscow and kyiv will finally end the war. “I hope that 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 this,” Lipei told The Associated Press. Not everyone shared his hope about the talks. Oleksandr Pastukhov, a 27-year-old video editor who participated in the commemoration, was skeptical that the envoys’ visit would change anything. “We’ve seen delegations like this come here before,” he said. “We’ve watched this so-called ceasefire for three days, which ended after only a couple of hours, and now we’re naively supposed to think that two people will come and change something.” In his Sunday prayer, Pope Leo XIV renewed his call for peace in Ukraine and said he hopes negotiations will yield results. “I hope that the efforts made in recent days to resume negotiations will bear concrete fruit and give way to diplomacy,” he told worshipers gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.___ Associated Press writers Volodymyr Yurchuk and Yevhenii Ocheretianyi in kyiv, Ukraine, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report. © 2026 The Canadian Press