Witkoff and Kushner land in Moscow, Kremlin announces three days without strikes on Kyiv

The development of the past few hours marks a first completed stage. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner landed in Moscow on Saturday, September 5, and were welcomed by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev: this is reported by dispatches from the Reuters agency picked up by U.S. News and the account by CNN.

The second new element is a unilateral statement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Vladimir Putin ordered the military not to strike Kyiv for three days, starting from midnight on Saturday. Peskov linked the measure to the contacts the Americans will have in the Ukrainian capital: the wording, reported by CNN based on the Kremlin’s statements disseminated through Russian state media, does not speak of a truce or a general ceasefire, but of a suspension referring to one city and one time frame. The same news item is picked up by CNBC, which draws on the TASS agency (Russian state news agency) and other state outlets: for verification purposes, those pickups do not add an independent source, and the ascertainable fact remains the announcement, not its execution.

The hours before the arrival

Before the envoys touched down in Moscow, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that two airports near Kyiv, including the one in Boryspil, had been hit by Russian missiles. The Ukrainian president then announced the suspension of Ukrainian air strikes for the duration of the mission, asking Moscow for reciprocal behavior.

Partial confirmation on this last point comes from the Russian side: Moscow’s Defense Ministry reported 53 Ukrainian drones in Russian airspace during the day on Saturday, a figure that the cited accounts indicate as markedly lower than the average of recent months. This is a figure declared by one belligerent about the other’s actions, and should be read for what it is: not an independent measurement, but a military communication that appears consistent with the Ukrainian announcement.

Boryspil, the toll revised upward

Overnight on September 5, a Russian attack hit a nine-story residential building in Boryspil, in the Kyiv oblast. The roof and top floor were damaged; fires broke out on the roof and in an apartment. This is reported by Ukrainska Pravda and the local desk of Suspilne, both based on communications from the regional military administration.

The toll changed over the course of the morning, and the direction of the change must be stated precisely: authorities had initially reported no injuries; subsequently, the head of the oblast’s military administration, Timur Tkachenko, updated the count to two women hospitalized, with acoustic trauma and closed chest trauma. This is not a downward revision of a figure already published by this newspaper, but an increase declared by the Ukrainian source relative to its own initial communication.

What we don’t know

The content of the proposal that Witkoff and Kushner are bringing is not known: no text has been made public by either side, and the three available sources describe the mission, not the document. We do not know whether the suspension announced by the Kremlin concerns only Kyiv or other areas as well, nor what verification mechanism exists: none has been indicated. No confirmed date for the mission’s Ukrainian leg appears in the available material.

The ascertainable scope at the time of publication is therefore limited: two American envoys in Moscow, an order declared by the Kremlin valid for three days for a single city, a suspension announced by Kyiv for the duration of the visit, and a nine-story building in Boryspil hit a few hours before all of this began.