European representatives may take part in the next round of Ukraine peace talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said after meeting near Dublin on Thursday. Russia has not publicly confirmed that it accepts their participation.
Zelenskyy said Europe would have a “voice” in future discussions rather than being kept apart from the negotiations. He argued that European involvement matters because the war is taking place in Europe and Ukraine expects to join the European Union.
Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, said in a post on X that both sides had agreed to include European partners in the next round. He said their participation would allow discussions of postwar European security alongside territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia. Euronews reported the comments following the meeting.
Moscow has not endorsed the proposal
Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov did not confirm that Moscow had agreed to bring European negotiators into subsequent talks. In comments shared by Russia’s foreign ministry on Friday, he said European countries were seeking to join negotiations and challenged them to decide whether they wanted peace or a continuation of the war.
The meeting in Ireland came after Witkoff and Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier in the week. Putin maintained Russia’s territorial demands and rejected the deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, according to The Associated Press.
No ceasefire or other concrete step toward ending the war was announced after the meetings. The proposed European role remains unsettled publicly, with Moscow yet to confirm it will participate on those terms.
Clayton Ward