29MAY

Witkoff and Kushner meet Putin with no result

1 min read

15:10UTC

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin in Moscow on 5 September and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on 6 September. Moscow announced no result from more than three hours of talks.

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Key takeaway

Three hours with Putin produced no announced result, and Lavrov ruled out pausing operations.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on 5 September and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on 6 September, and Moscow announced no result from more than three hours of talks.

Sergei Lavrov told reporters on 12 September that Russia is ready to negotiate but will not suspend military operations while it does. Read that as the Russian position rather than a concession: Moscow treats talking and shooting as compatible policies, so the talks cost the campaign nothing. Zelenskyy has offered to meet Putin at the G20 summit in Miami in December.

Washington's involvement has run mostly through weapons rather than terms. Trump and Rutte expanded the allied purchase mechanism in July, and the money has kept moving while the negotiating track has not. Three hours in Moscow produced no communiqué, and no date has been set for a further round.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Two US envoys met separately with the Russian and Ukrainian presidents within a day of each other, but Moscow announced no outcome from the talks. Russia's foreign minister says his country will keep negotiating without pausing its military operations, while Ukraine's president has floated meeting Putin at a global summit in December.

Sources:Associated Press

Mentions:Steve Witkoff →Jared Kushner →Vladimir Putin →Volodymyr Zelenskyy →Miami →Lavrov →Russia →Washington →Kyiv →Ukraine →Moscow →

First Reported In

Update #27 · Russia's rate hold names the fuel shortage

Associated Press· 13 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Witkoff and Kushner meet Putin with no result

Sergei Lavrov said on 12 September that Russia will negotiate without suspending military operations, which treats talking and shooting as compatible policies.

Led to

Witkoff's Miami talks end a day early

Witkoff and Kushner returned to Ukraine talks after their September Moscow and Kyiv round produced no announced result.

Occurred 9 Oct 2026

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Different Perspectives

Council on Foreign Relations

CFR's analysis identified 18.75% of the 48-team field facing access barriers — the only available quantification after the State Department admitted it has none. The explicit contrast with South Africa 2010's visa waiver for all ticket holders positions the US as a regressive host by historical standards.

New York commuters / Assemblyman Bhalla

Bhalla framed Penn Station's closures as a class issue: 'For the 99 percent that can't afford to attend the games, it would be nice to at least know how you're going to get home from work.' Eight closures lock 650,000 daily commuters out for tournament traffic, with one on a Monday rush hour.

French Football Federation

The FFF called an 11:00 CEST press conference for 28 July, at its Paris headquarters, following an extraordinary executive committee meeting, at which Zinedine Zidane is expected to be presented as head coach succeeding Didier Deschamps. As of this writing no communique confirms the appointment, contract length or start date.

Morocco

Morocco is pushing for the 2030 final at its Grand Stade Hassan II in Casablanca, a planned 115,000-seat venue that would be the world's largest football stadium on completion. The venue is contested by a Spanish petition for the Santiago Bernabeu, and FIFA has fixed neither the venue nor the tournament's proposed 64-team format.

FIFA

FIFA's first tournament report, published 27 July, itemises nearly 300,000 accredited personnel, 73,700 security staff and 300,000 square metres of custom-grown turf, with no revenue or cost figure attached. As a Swiss association answering to its own Congress rather than a treasury, FIFA has followed the same operational-before-financial sequence it used after Qatar 2022.

Javier Tebas / La Liga

La Liga president Javier Tebas said on 21 July that FIFA's system is rotten from the root and that Gianni Infantino's time as president has, in his words, concluded. Tebas has no vote in FIFA's process, so days after the IOC declined jurisdiction over a separate ethics complaint, he used the only instrument he has.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.