16JUL

Witkoff and Kushner meet Putin with no result

1 min read

09:48UTC

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

Cross-border power traders

The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.

EDF

River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.

Gasunie

TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.

German gas-fired generators

Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.

European Commission (DG Energy)

Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.

Spain's LNG terminal operators

Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.

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