The Moscow leg of this week's Ukraine shuttle ended on Thursday with the US envoys announcing that the trilateral format is restarted and a new meeting set — and with Russia publicly disputing their claim that Europeans will sit at that next meeting. Talks between President Vladimir Putin and envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have ended in Moscow, CNN reported, after the trio discussed the Abu Dhabi round that ended without a breakthrough — the round whose one concrete outcome, a major prisoner exchange agreed in principle, this site reported on Wednesday. Speaking at Vnukovo Airport just before departing, Witkoff told CNN: "I think progress was made. I think it was made earlier today. People didn't think that we were going to restart trilateral. We've restarted it. We've set a new meeting. This is what President Trump wants to see." No date or venue for that meeting was reported by either outlet opened for this article, and no breakthrough was announced. The envoys' next stop is Dublin, where they will meet President Zelensky, who spent Thursday at the European Political Community summit in the Irish capital. This morning's arrival report set the meeting's first test as whether Putin would move on the format; the two sides' answers do not match.
What did the envoys claim the meeting achieved?
A restarted process and a wider table, on their account. Witkoff also appeared to say that European representatives would join the next talks: "They're our partners, and it's important for them to be involved," he told reporters. Euronews carried the same claim in the form Witkoff gave it at the end of the meeting, according to Reuters: "The Europeans will join at the next meeting, which we consider to be a very important moment because they are our partners and it's important to us that they take part." Kushner called the discussions "very fulsome and detailed" on all the topics, which would "hopefully" inform the next multilateral discussions. Inside the meeting, CNN reported, Witkoff expressed his desire for European nations to join the next round, Kushner told Putin that "the Europeans have a desire for this war to really be the end and for there to be a long peace after," and Putin replied that Russia had "never objected (to) pursuing dialogue" with Europe, adding: "I want this peace to be eternal, for good." Presidential special envoy Kirill Dmitriev told CNN that "working on European security is definitely a great, important step for Europe."
Did Russia agree to a European seat?
Not on the Kremlin aide's account. Yuri Ushakov confirmed that trilateral talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the US would continue — the core of Witkoff's announcement — but appeared to play down the assertion that European representatives would join them: "They are making every effort to get involved in the negotiations, but, as our president has said, they need to decide whether they want peace or a continuation of the war. So far, all their practical actions point precisely to the latter," he said. Euronews reported the same caution in stronger form: Russia has asked Europe to cease military aid to Ukraine as a condition, and Ushakov tied the peace-or-war choice to Europe's military support for Kyiv. The resistance predates the meeting: in Abu Dhabi, Moscow's delegation refused to sit down with the European team, Euronews reported; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called European involvement not a "promising approach," CNN reported; and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that no contacts with EU representatives were planned or took place, also per CNN. Peskov added, in Euronews' reporting, that designating a single European envoy was a pre-requisite for joining the negotiations — and EU leaders are set to discuss appointing a special envoy on Friday, with President Zelensky asking them to name one common representative by the end of the month.
What else did the meeting put on the agenda?
Europe's security architecture, on Putin's stated interest. Euronews reported that Putin made clear his real interest lies in revising the continent's security architecture, citing President Trump's plan for a "big, beautiful agreement" that "might involve all of Europe": "President Trump offers to agree on instruments for European security as a whole," Putin told the envoys. European leaders in Dublin pushed back, arguing it was Moscow that breached the security agreements in place for decades and that any architecture discussion required a European presence; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, "It is important that Russia comes to the table and that Russia is ready for talks." Ushakov also said Putin and President Trump will "continue discussions" on Ukraine at a planned bilateral meeting at the APEC summit in China — in Shenzhen, per CNN. None of this moved the war itself on Thursday: Moscow launched a ballistic missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight into Thursday, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, and in Kyiv at least one person was killed and several others injured in a Thursday-morning drone attack, local authorities said — the same overnight strike covered in today's Kyiv report. What the restarted format produces now depends on the Dublin debrief and on whether the new meeting, when it is dated, seats the Europeans Witkoff promised and Ushakov qualified.
Sources: CNN (12 November 2026, read in full, crawled 19:35 UTC); Euronews (12 November 2026, read in full via the rostered Euronews carrier app.ekkow.com, published 18:39 UTC, updated 19:02 UTC). The meeting's end and the restarted-format and new-meeting claims are carried by both reports; the European-participation claim is Witkoff's in both, and the qualification is Ushakov's in both — the disagreement is reported as a disagreement, not resolved. The envoys' Dublin travel to meet and debrief Zelensky and the Putin–Trump APEC continuation are CNN's only; Euronews carries the European leaders' Dublin presence, not the envoys' leg. The cease-military-aid condition framing, the security-architecture exchange, the Merz quote, the Friday envoy discussion and the Peskov pre-requisite are Euronews'; the Vnukovo remarks, the in-meeting dialogue and the Dmitriev quote are CNN's, whose Witkoff airport remarks Euronews independently carries in a Reuters-attributed version. No date or venue for the next round, and no territorial outcome, was reported by either source. No market snapshot box is included: no figure opened this run was attributed by a source to the Moscow outcome.
