President Volodymyr Zelensky said no date has yet been set for the visit to Kyiv by US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Asked by a reporter, the Ukrainian leader reiterated that it would be fair for them to visit Ukraine.
Zelensky was speaking at a press conference in Oslo, where he and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre signed a Joint Declaration on Enhanced Defense and Security Cooperation between Ukraine and Norway.
“No, we have not received any information about when they will come,” Zelensky said. “They told me at the very beginning of April, April 1 or 2. It was a positive conversation and they confirmed that they would come.”
Zelensky said a visit to Kyiv would be only fair, given their previous trips to Russia.
“I think it is fair that they come to us [to Kyiv] because they have been to Moscow many times, and it is also important to send that signal to our people who are enduring [the war]. So we are waiting for them,” he said.
On April 9, in an interview with Alastair Campbell on The Rest Is Politics podcast, Zelensky criticized the US negotiating team for what he suggested was a lack of balance and a poor understanding of the Kremlin’s real goals.
Zelensky said US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had “spent too much time” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior Kremlin officials. He pointed to what he described as a glaring imbalance in travel: five visits to Moscow last year and none to Kyiv.
“President Zelensky is expressing the frustration many feel in Ukraine and beyond that the US seems far more aligned with Moscow than with Kyiv as far as the war in Ukraine is concerned,” US analyst Paul Goble told Kyiv Post on Friday.