Domestic narratives about the visit of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff once again showed that the Kremlin is not ready for negotiations and treats the current round as a ceremonial episode used to shore up its legitimacy at home and raise its prestige. Official propaganda, pro-government experts, and the Z-community converged on a commitment to continuing the war and on assessing escalation as the most likely scenario, diverging only on its timing and on the limits of what is acceptable, up to and including explicit suggestions that nuclear weapons might be used and calls for genocide in Ukraine. Key topics:
Official Propaganda: “Ukraine Is the Sole Obstacle to Peace”
Kremlin Experts: “De-Escalation Still Cannot Be Expected”
Z-Community: “The Final Solution of the Bandera Question”
Executive Summary
Every segment of the Kremlin’s information space covered the visit of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Moscow and Kyiv on September 5–6 as a ceremonial set piece rather than as a genuine negotiating mechanism. Official propaganda, pro-government experts, and the Z-community diverged only marginally in tone but converged on the conclusion that this round cannot end in either peace or a ceasefire, and that escalation remains the likeliest course of the coming months. The density of media coverage is explained by a domestic objective: against the backdrop of an all-time high in negative public assessments of foreign policy (according to data (1) from the Kremlin-aligned Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), in July 2026, 31% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the current foreign policy course), the very fact that Trump’s emissaries are flying to Moscow again is worked into proof of Russia’s status and into legitimation of the regime.
Domestic official propaganda promoted narratives about “Russia’s striving for peace” and about “Ukraine and Europe as the obstacle to it” in synchrony, accompanied by ostentatious belittling of the American side:
“the guests knew from experience that they would have to wait for an audience in the Kremlin, and not merely for an hour. <...> everyone is waiting for the word that it is time to head to the Kremlin.”
In narratives about the negotiations, Ukraine was presented, as it traditionally is, as a Western puppet:
“the Kyiv regime’s capacity to make agreements is, as is well known, close to zero,” while before the meeting Zelensky “consulted his grown-up national security advisers” from Berlin, Paris, and London.
By September 7, the line on Europe had hardened into the formula “the US calls for peace, Europe sponsors war.” The position was set out in its most concentrated form in a piece in the national newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, a particular favorite of Putin:
“Putin outlined the essence of the meeting – not to ‘find a final solution,’ no. To inform and to discuss.”
Responsibility for any breakdown of the talks was assigned in advance to Kyiv and to London as the “chief operator of the war party,” while potential resolutions were pushed off to “maybe in winter, maybe in spring,” the same timeline that Svarshchiki, an insider Z-channel linked to the security bloc, had named (2) several days earlier.
Kremlin-aligned experts say the same thing in plain terms. Political analyst Evgeny Minchenko, who works closely with the Kremlin, stated that substantive negotiations will begin “not as a result of the visit <...>, but after the situation on the battlefield changes.” Russia in Global Affairs, the flagship expert journal on foreign policy, reposted a piece arguing that
“Moscow objectively has no reason to rush, since time is working in its favor if anything.”
Its editor-in-chief Fyodor Lukyanov contemptuously reduced the mission to “the shuttle activity of a son-in-law and a business partner,” adding that the war would be brought to a close by structures possessing state legitimacy, since “it cannot be done by underworld rules.” Ilya Gambashidze’s Social Design Agency, one of the Presidential Administration’s key contractors for FIMI operations, suggested that Washington delegitimize Zelensky or “repeat the stunt they pulled not long ago with Maduro”; Gambashidze himself stated that strikes on infrastructure had “only strengthened” Moscow’s resolve. Alexey Chesnakov, who previously worked closely with Vladislav Surkov, called escalation at the front and in long-range strikes “the most realistic scenario,” and Alexey Naumov of the Russian International Affairs Council defined the purpose of the visit as “preventing a third world war,” concluding:
“Neither a peace agreement nor a ceasefire is to be expected.”
The Z-community converted the same conclusion into a demand to carry the war through to a victorious end. Svarshchiki, a Z-channel close to the security bloc, stated that the American proposals
“in the run-up to elections even look like a victory, but strategically this is a resumption of the war by 2030,” and that therefore “it must be finished now, and one must enter history with only one interpretation of these events – the final solution of the Bandera question.”
Two Majors, another Z-channel close to the security bloc, reduced the outcome to “an agreement to reach an agreement,” while MIG of Russia ran the headline “WE ARE NOT EXPECTING PEACE, AND THAT IS FOR SURE.” Z-analyst Yuri Kotenok counted off the eighth time Putin had received “Vitek and the son-in-law” (a contemptuous rhyming nickname for Witkoff and Kushner popular in Russian pro-war discourse), and Fighterbomber openly suggested that the alternative to limiting the fighting would be moving closer “to the beginning of the use of nuclear weapons,” in response to which Yulia Vityazeva set out the most extreme version of the pro-war Z-community’s demand, calling for genocide:
“Ukraine in its present form must not remain. A cleansing down to the last Banderite!”
Official Propaganda: “Ukraine Is the Sole Obstacle to Peace”
Russian official propaganda covered the visit of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Moscow and Kyiv on September 5–6 in considerable detail, as part of a broader narrative about Russia’s role and significance as a key player on the international stage.
That narrative is aimed first and foremost at the domestic audience, to sustain the image and reputation of the Russian authorities.
Among the other narratives promoted, several that are traditional for Russian propaganda stand out clearly: “Russia is striving for peace,” “Ukraine is the sole obstacle to peace,” and “Europe is sabotaging peace, setting Ukraine on Russia, and preparing aggression against it.” All of these messages were pushed in synchrony across all coverage of the visit by Trump’s emissaries. On national television, the Sunday evening news broadcasts that concentrate Kremlin narratives for the domestic audience asserted that
Particular emphasis was placed on the “clear and exhaustive assessments of the situation taking shape in the course of the SMO” that were conveyed to Witkoff and Kushner, who “promised to use in Kyiv the assessments voiced by Putin regarding the paths to a settlement.”
At the same time, Russian propaganda cast US representatives, in its customary way, as the weaker party:
“the guests knew from experience that they would have to wait for an audience in the Kremlin, and not merely for an hour. <...> everyone is waiting for the word that it is time to head to the Kremlin.”
This signaled that the Kremlin was not prepared for genuine dialogue between equals. The same haughty posture extended to assessments of Kyiv:
“the Kyiv regime’s capacity to make agreements is, as is well known, close to zero”; “lying is nothing new for Zelensky.”
Similar comments were aimed at Europe:
“before meeting them [Witkoff and Kushner] Zelensky consulted his grown-up national security advisers from Germany, France, and Britain. But they, clearly, will give Ukraine no good advice.”
On September 7, accusations that Europe was obstructing the talks intensified, carrying evident sarcasm about how little Europe is taken seriously:
“the effort to discredit the American mission in the Western media began before the visit even took place. Because Trump’s envoys are once again flying calmly to Moscow, once again talking to Putin, while Europe watches this on television, trying to scrape together enough for Patriots [air and missile defense systems] for Zelensky. <...> Europe really was not at the Moscow table. The attempt to squeeze in came in Kyiv <...> but getting into the same room does not mean being able to dictate terms, rewriting once again what had been discussed warmly and constructively in the Kremlin a day earlier. The tasks are too different: the US calls for peace, Europe sponsors war.” (5)
The Kremlin’s position emerged in more concentrated form in a piece in Komsomolskaya Pravda, the national newspaper with the largest audience (more than 2.9 million daily readers aged 16 and over), which Vladimir Putin has repeatedly called “his favorite.” (6) The article “Does the US want to make peace or to buy time for Ukraine?” (7) set out in detail Moscow’s obstructive approach to the negotiations:
“Putin outlined the essence of the meeting – not to ‘find a final solution,’ no. To inform and to discuss. A new turn in the negotiations is only beginning.”
Responsibility for a potential failure of the current round was immediately attributed to Ukraine and the United Kingdom, in a parallel with the Kremlin’s cherished narrative about “Boris Johnson’s derailment of the Istanbul process and of peace in 2022”:
“today there is no sense that Kyiv is ready to make a deal. London, as the chief operator of the ‘war party,’ understands that Ukraine needs a breather to prepare its next move.”
The rhetoric of the piece was overtly escalatory toward Europe:
“the situation is heating up and threatens direct escalation of the conflict, up to and including NATO’s involvement.”
Prospects for progress on the negotiating track, meanwhile, were plainly deferred:
“the West will have to look for ways to a solution, and it will not be easy <...> over time, maybe in winter, maybe in spring, real paths to resolving the conflict may begin to take shape.”
Notably, the same timeline had been named several days earlier by Svarshchiki, an insider Z-channel linked to the security bloc, as EK Stratcom described in a recent report. (8)
The combination of narratives in official propaganda plainly demonstrates that the Kremlin treats the current round of negotiations as a purely ceremonial exercise, instrumentalizing it to boost its own domestic prestige and to lend the regime additional legitimacy, rather than as a mechanism for resolving the conflict. Putin’s public position, meanwhile, is unchanged: only the fulfillment of Moscow’s maximalist demands can serve as the foundation for a “long-term settlement and peace,” and since those demands are not being accepted at the negotiating table, the Kremlin is prepared to keep climbing the escalation ladder to achieve them by military means.
Kremlin Experts: “De-Escalation Still Cannot Be Expected”
Foreign affairs experts and political analysts who work closely with the Kremlin were unanimous in their assessments:
no breakthroughs took place at the talks, nor in substance could they have, because Russia is supposedly winning on the battlefield and the visit by Trump’s emissaries merely gave a formal start to a new round of negotiations.
Evgeny Minchenko, one of the most prominent pro-government Russian political analysts, stated (9) that
“real, substantive trilateral negotiations between Russia and Ukraine with US participation will begin not as a result of the visit <...>, but after the situation on the battlefield changes.”
Russia in Global Affairs, the Kremlin’s leading specialist journal on foreign policy, reposted a piece that set out a clear thesis about Russia’s lack of interest in a genuine settlement during the current negotiations:
“Moscow objectively has no reason to rush, since time is working in its favor if anything, given that it has objective military tasks whose accomplishment also strengthens its negotiating position.” (10)
The journal’s editor-in-chief Fyodor Lukyanov, one of the Kremlin’s foremost foreign policy experts, argued (11) that the seniority of the negotiators on the US side does not match the importance of the issues under discussion, and called the visits of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, with contemptuous sarcasm, “the shuttle activity of a son-in-law and a business partner,” which in his view may be no more than “a catalyst for fundamental negotiations on ending the conflict. But those talks will be conducted, and the war brought to a close, by figures and structures possessing state legitimacy and all the necessary powers. It cannot be done by underworld rules.”
In assessing the options open to the US, Kremlin experts proceeded mainly from decisions and proposals favorable to Russia. Ilya Gambashidze’s Social Design Agency, one of the Presidential Administration’s principal contractors for organizing FIMI operations, put out a post asserting that
“to settle the Ukrainian conflict, the US <...> could, for example, publicly delegitimize Zelensky. Or even repeat the stunt they pulled not long ago with Maduro.” (12)
Gambashidze himself dismissed the prospects for “real movement”:
“the enemy’s attempts to change Russia’s negotiating position through strikes on infrastructure produced the opposite of the expected effect. Russia sustained certain losses, but this only strengthened its resolve.” (13)
At the same time, a number of pro-government analysts stressed the danger of escalation in the near term. Alexey Chesnakov, formerly Vladislav Surkov’s right hand, emphasized (14) that “we are witnessing Europe’s ever deeper immersion in the problem” and that “Brussels is afraid that it will simply be stiffed.” In his view, “given that both sides of the conflict are seeking to strengthen their negotiating positions, the probability of escalation both along the front line and in long-range strikes remains the most realistic scenario,” while “de-escalation still cannot be expected until there are further signals.” Alexey Naumov, an expert at the pro-government Russian International Affairs Council, wrote (15) about the same escalation risk, describing the aim of the Americans’ visit as “a slight calming of large-scale escalation” and “preventing a third world war”:
“To prevent a Russian strike on the EU, to prevent Ukrainian strikes on the Russian leadership, to do everything possible to keep a chain of accidental events from leading to a world war.” “Neither a peace agreement nor a ceasefire is to be expected,” he concluded.
Z-Community: “The Final Solution of the Bandera Question”
In the same register of skepticism and distrust toward the US representatives, the pro-war Z-community, which increasingly backs the Kremlin in its drive toward escalation, spoke with near-unanimity.
Svarshchiki, a Z-channel close to the security bloc, wrote (16) that the US proposals “may sound tempting, and in the run-up to elections they even look like a victory, but strategically this is a resumption of the war by 2030,” and called for carrying the war through to a victorious end now:
“It must be finished now, and one must enter history with only one interpretation of these events – the final solution of the Bandera question.”
Two Majors, another Z-channel close to the security bloc, ironically called (17) the outcome of the talks “an agreement to reach an agreement,” thereby displaying its disdain for the process, and shifted responsibility for escalation and for the prolongation of the war onto Ukraine:
“In short: Washington does not guarantee an end to the war before winter, while Kyiv is already discussing resources for continuing it.”
MIG of Russia, one more Z-channel close to the security bloc, made the point (18) that “WE ARE NOT EXPECTING PEACE, AND THAT IS FOR SURE,” having declared earlier, on September 5, that “it is naive to expect any breakthroughs from the visit of the sweet couple W&K,” (19) since the mood of both Russian war correspondents and Ukrainian Telegram channels, as well as the mood “at the top,” plainly shows that no one wants either a truce or peace: “both sides write that they are winning, so what would be the point of stopping?” Z-analyst Yuri Kotenok voiced the same positions:
“Here for the eighth (!) time Vladimir Putin has received ‘Vitek and the son-in-law’ – US President’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. <...> [Putin] is showing persistence, which, combined with the relentless grinding down of Ukrainian and indeed Western resources in the Special Operation, is inexorably bringing Russia’s victory closer.” (20)
Fighterbomber wrote (21) about the inevitability of an escalatory scenario, including the use of nuclear weapons, should de-escalation efforts fail:
“as a result of these negotiations we will either move to some options for stopping or limiting the fighting, or, on the contrary, come closer to the beginning of the use of nuclear weapons.”
War correspondent Roman Alekhin, designated a foreign agent for criticizing the Russian authorities but of late increasingly voicing positions synchronized with Kremlin narratives, stated (22) that “breakthroughs should not be expected” and called for escalating strikes against Ukraine:
“today a strengthening of Russia’s position can come only through more precise and massive strikes on the rear. To make logistics impossible in Ukraine, to make it impossible to produce any means of waging war.”
Z-volunteer Alexey Zhivov, following official propaganda, called on the Americans to make up their minds about their approach to the negotiations:
“The Americans will have to decide what they are bringing: a peace treaty or another postponement of the war. The first requires taking account of reality, of Russia’s security interests, and of the situation on the ground. The second simply requires tossing Kyiv more money, missiles, and promises, and pretending that time is working for the West.” (23)
Zhivov had earlier stated that “Moscow is still trying to finagle a ‘victory on points’ on the diplomatic track – and to enter into a deal with the US bypassing the EU,” (24) while Komsomolskaya Pravda war correspondent Alexander Kots continued (25) to blame Europe for the war’s continuation: “there is no one to bargain with in Kyiv. The expired Ukrainian president does not sign – he passes things along. <...> And the masters sit in Paris, London, and Berlin.”
Ultra-pro-war Z-author Yulia Vityazeva, for her part, set out plainly the Z-community’s demand that the war continue and escalate, up to and including the organization of genocide in Ukraine:
“‘The SMO must be brought to a conclusion in such a way that there is no more Nazism in Europe,’ – Sergey Lavrov. That is precisely why Ukraine in its present form must not remain. A cleansing down to the last Banderite!” (26)