Overview
- Private U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin for about three hours and obtained a time‑bound pause in raids that took effect at midnight between Friday and Saturday and was declared to last 72 hours to allow the envoys to travel to Kyiv.
- The pause covers only Moscow and Kyiv and did not stop heavy attacks elsewhere, with local officials reporting three dead in Kharkiv and the Zaporizhzhia governor saying 886 strikes hit 54 settlements in 24 hours, leaving at least one dead and 25 wounded.
- Kyiv accused Russian forces of bombing Kyiv and Boryspil airports overnight during the pause, and the envoys arrived in Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky with European security advisers joining talks.
- Moscow said discussions in the Kremlin went beyond battlefield issues to include sanctions and economic projects, and an acting U.S. Treasury sanctions official accompanied the mission, while a Russian deputy foreign minister suggested a Russia‑U.S.‑China format was not excluded.
- Ukrainian forces reportedly struck targets inside Russia, including a Ryazan refinery, and Kyiv officials are publicly pursuing plans to scale drone strikes toward 1,000 drones per night, leaving the capital‑only pause fragile and easily undermined by continued operations.