Russian leader Vladimir Putin has ordered a 72-hour halt to airstrikes on Kyiv to coincide with a high-stakes visit by U.S. peace envoys.
The pause is attributes to the visit of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff after they arrived in Moscow.
The US envoys landed at Vnukovo Airport on Saturday morning, where they were met by Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, before leaving in a motorcade ahead of Washington’s latest bid to reach a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
The envoys met Putin in Moscow before they will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
‘Putin has ordered that no strikes be carried out against Kyiv for three days, starting at midnight September 5’, it is reported.
Ahead of their arrival, Putin’s deputy foreign minister issued a warning to the US over how to bring the four year war to an end.
‘The key question is the extent to which the US administration is prepared to invest in finding a real solution to the current crisis, considering the realities on the ground,’ Sergei Ryabkov said.
This, according to Ryabkov, was a situation not developing in Kyiv’s favour, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Moscow is repeatedly demanding that Ukraine permanently cede occupied territories and drop its ambitions to join NATO.
