Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, with a meeting with President Vladimir Putin expected to follow. The visit continues the Trump administration’s preference for a negotiated end to the war that began when Russian forces crossed into Ukraine in February 2022. That invasion, not any external ethnic orchestration, produced the present stalemate, the high casualties on both sides, and the continuing questions of territory, security guarantees, and sanctions that any settlement must address.

Ukraine’s population is overwhelmingly Christian—Eastern Orthodox in the larger part of the country, with a substantial Roman Catholic presence in the west. In 2019 that electorate chose Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jewish comedian and television producer with no prior political office, as president. The result was a free election under Ukrainian law. Zelenskyy’s background is a matter of public record; it does not explain the decision in Moscow to launch the invasion, the earlier failure of the Minsk process, or the subsequent military course of the war. Those events followed from state calculations in the Kremlin, Ukrainian resistance, and the security commitments and material support supplied by Western governments.

The practical question before the envoys is whether a durable arrangement on borders, force posture, and economic relations can be reached that both governments will accept. Religious and ethnic composition of the population is relevant to Ukrainian domestic politics and to long-term social cohesion, but it is secondary to the balance of military power and the willingness of the parties to live with the terms of any ceasefire. The Moscow meetings will be measured by whether they narrow those differences, not by the identities of the participants.

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