White House envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met face to face with Russian President Vladimir Putin inside the Kremlin on Thursday, then flew directly to Dublin to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on what was said — the most compressed round yet of the shuttle diplomacy the Trump administration has been running for months in an attempt to end Russia's nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

The Moscow stop followed two days of U.S.-mediated trilateral talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Abu Dhabi, which wrapped up Tuesday with an agreement on a large prisoner exchange but no movement on the war's central sticking point: territory. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters ahead of the Moscow meeting that Russia did not yet know the full results of the Abu Dhabi round but that the American side was "bringing something" back to Putin. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had called the Abu Dhabi talks "very productive," while cautioning there was "still a lot of work to do."

A faster handoff than usual

What made Thursday's round unusual was the speed of the handoff. Rather than returning to Washington to report back, Kushner and Witkoff flew straight to Ireland, where Zelensky was already attending the European Political Community summit. Interfax Ukraine reported that Kushner was expected to brief the Ukrainian leader on the Moscow results and "further develop the ideas" that emerged in the Kremlin meeting.

Kushner told reporters that adding European partners to the negotiating format would be on the agenda with Putin, though the Russian leader has so far ruled that out. Kushner declined to specify where Moscow and Kyiv might be narrowing their differences, saying only that the talks "helped."

THERE WILL BE NO SIMPLE SOLUTIONS TO ENDING THIS WAR

Zelensky, for his part, has been explicit that he wants Europe formally inside the room for whatever comes next. "We believe that Europe must be represented at all stages of substantive diplomacy," he said this week, a position that has repeatedly run into resistance from the Kremlin, which has preferred to deal with Washington directly.

Even as diplomats shuttled between capitals, the fighting did not pause. Ukrainian officials said Russia launched ballistic missiles and dozens of combat drones overnight, killing at least one person — a reminder of how far the two sides remain from any ceasefire even as the diplomatic track accelerates.

What's next

The core gaps are unchanged: Russia continues to demand all of the Donetsk region as a condition for peace, while Ukraine has pushed to freeze the front line roughly where it sits today. Washington has floated a "NATO-like" security guarantee for Ukraine as part of any eventual deal, but neither side has said publicly how close that framework is to being finalized. Further rounds of talks are expected, though no date has been announced for the next meeting.