United States envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been seen as embarrassing and amateurish after their latest attempt to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, suggesting that European patience with the US administration of Donald Trump is running out. “Jared Kushner’s incompetence was on full display this weekend,” wrote Slate magazine. “The Witkoff-Kushner circus act is an embarrassment,” said the Daily Telegraph, while the Financial Times titled its story, “Kushner and Witkoff’s blind amateurism.” Washington has pursued negotiations without its European allies since US President Donald Trump cut off military aid to Ukraine and agreed to meet with Putin last year. Witkoff caused outrage after he openly flattered Russian President Vladimir Putin. “When we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all,” he told Putin. Ukraine stopped firing missiles and drones at Moscow between September 5 and 7 to enable the US envoys aircraft to fly safely between the capitals. Russia also paused attacks as they visited Kyiv. “Please come more often, so that our people have the chance to live normally,” Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy joked at a media conference with them.
But as soon as Witkoff and Kushner left, Russia showered drones and missiles on Kyiv killing at least four civilians on September 8 and 9. Russia has shown little sign that it is ready for a deal. Putin’s diplomatic aide, Valery Ushakov, told the US envoys that Moscow was committed to achieving all its goals in Ukraine. “Russia intends to achieve the goals of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted on September 8. “Of course, we’re all interested in ending the conflict as quickly as possible. Moreover, it must end on our terms, in order to prevent the possibility of it recurring in the future or spreading into a global conflict,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Vedomosti newspaper two days later. “Nuclear weapons can be used in certain circumstances.
This isn’t a scare tactic,” he warned. Zelenskyy has insisted that only leverage on the battlefield will force Moscow to negotiate. “Without a strong position on the ground, there will only be ultimatums,” Zelenskyy said this week. Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Kyiv on the fourth anniversary of Ukraine’s Kharkiv offensive, which reclaimed 11,500sq km (4,440 square miles) of northern Ukrainian territory from Russian occupation, including more than 500 settlements. Shortly after that, Russian forces withdrew from roughly 8,000sq km (3,100 square miles) of territory it had occupied on the right bank of the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, deeming it to be indefensible.
Both actions, along with Russia previously lifting sieges on Kyiv, Sumy and Chernihiv, reduced the Russian occupation from more than a quarter of Ukrainian territory to less than a fifth. Since then, Russia has made only marginal gains for mounting losses. Ukraine’s military leadership said that since the beginning of the war, Russia has suffered 1.5m losses of personnel – both soldiers killed or incapacitated. This year, Russia has again suffered setbacks, notably during the Oleksandrivka counteroffensive, which reclaimed 745sq km (290 square miles) in the eastern and southern Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Russia has appeared to have escalated its targeting of Ukrainian officials in recent days. On September 4, a drone struck the headquarters of Ukraine’s internal security service, the SBU. “The drone was deliberately directed at the office of the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Oleksandr Poklad,” said the SBU. Ukrainian defence adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said it was a jet-powered Geran-4 Russian drone – one of two launched from the occupied eastern Donetsk region and sent in tandem towards Kyiv. One of the SBU’s main tasks is to arrest Russian agents guiding enemy artillery and drone strikes on Ukrainian soil.
Beskrestnov believed an agent within 5km (3 miles) of SBU headquarters directed the drone intended for Poklad in its final stages. “I instructed Poklad to respond appropriately, significantly and, if possible, in kind,” said Zelenskyy, later adding that “the geographical areas for the response have been determined”. On September 8, Russia also came close to blowing up Zelenskyy’s plane as it waited on the tarmac the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. The plane was carrying Zelenskyy, his wife Olena and Moldovan premier Maia Sandu to Oslo for the funeral of King Harald V. Norwegian premier Jonas Gahr Store said the plane came close to being hit.
Both incidents came after Zelenskyy warned airlines on September 1 that “Russian airspace is becoming completely dangerous” and was “in effect closing” due to Ukrainian long-range drone operations. Ukraine continued its long-range operations during the past week, targeting Russian oil and military infrastructure. Between September 4 and 10, Ukraine struck at least seven refineries and gas condensate processing plants, two of them at an unprecedented 3,000km (1,860 miles) range from its border – the Novy Urengoy and Purovsky gas condensate plants, are beyond the Ural Mountains in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamalia. Closer to home, Ukraine also struck the military airfield at Rostov-on-Don and the Russian port of Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea.
The Ukrainian military said they were “used to supply military personnel in both directions: components and attack UAVs of the Shahed type from Iran to the Russian Federation, [and] explosives, components for drones and ammunition from the Russian Federation to Iran”. Ukraine sees the attacks as effective, since Russia’s finance ministry reported a $67.9bn deficit for the first eight months of the war. That is one-and-a-half times its deficit during the same period last year and far beyond the $44.5bn deficit budgeted for in all of 2026. The ministry cited rising expenditures and falling revenues from oil and gas.
Those revenues were 16 percent lower than the first eight months of 2025, at just under $58bn, said Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service. The expenditures are almost certainly military. The Intelligence Service assessed that Russia spent a record $126.7bn on defence in the first half of this year. That is 30 percent higher than in the same period of last year, 65 percent higher than in the first half of 2024 and 145 percent higher than in the corresponding period of 2023.
