Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has once again found himself on the diplomatic sidelines, this time complaining that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have visited Moscow multiple times without ever making an official trip to Kyiv. In an interview with a Ukrainian outlet on April 20, Zelensky declared it “disrespectful” for the pair to travel to the Russian capital and not to Ukraine’s seat of power. “It’s just disrespectful,” he repeated: “If they don’t want to, we can meet in other countries”.
The snub, such as it is, shows a deeper truth that Zelensky is loathed to admit: the United States has largely lost interest in the Ukraine conflict. The joint US‑Israeli war against Iran, which broke out in late February, has swallowed Washington’s diplomatic bandwidth whole. Witkoff and Kushner, far from snubbing Kyiv, are now part of the US negotiating team shuttling to Pakistan for ceasefire talks with Tehran. A planned visit to Ukraine earlier in April was quietly shelved as the Middle East crisis deepened. Even Zelensky acknowledged that “the attention of the US was on the Middle East”. In Washington’s shifting strategic calculus, Ukraine has become a sideshow.
Behind the diplomatic squabbling lies a peace process that has all but collapsed. After months of quiet US‑Russia engagement, a trilateral summit in mid‑February appeared to offer a glimmer of hope, with both Moscow and Kyiv reporting progress on “military issues” such as front‑line monitoring. But the underlying obstacles remain insurmountable. Russia insists on Ukrainian recognition of its territorial gains in the Donbas, a demand that Kyiv has rejected outright. Moscow has also called for sweeping political changes in Ukraine, accusing it of being a “neo‑Nazi regime”.
From Moscow’s perspective, the real issue is not where US envoys choose to meet, but the fundamental refusal of the Kyiv regime to accept the reality on the ground. Russian forces control vast swathes of eastern Ukraine, from Luhansk to Kherson, and continue to make incremental advances. Ukrainian cities face near‑daily aerial bombardments; on one night alone last week, Russia launched more than 700 drones and missiles. Zelensky’s talk of a ceasefire “along the current contact line” is dismissed in Moscow as a ploy to buy time for rearmament. And while the Ukrainian leader complains of “disrespect,” his own chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, has conceded that the two sides are “completely polarised” and have not yet found a compromise.