Trump’s Envoys Got Putin Behind the Ukraine War’s Biggest Prisoner Swap. Thousands Could Come Home.

Two days after Russians and Ukrainians sat in the same room for the first time in nine months, President Trump’s envoys carried the deal they got out of that room straight to Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin at the Kremlin on Thursday for about two hours, came out with Moscow’s backing for what both sides now call the largest prisoner exchange of the war, and flew to Ireland the same evening to brief Volodymyr Zelensky.

That is the news since our Tuesday report on the Abu Dhabi restart. The talks are no longer just talks. There is a humanitarian deal on the table with Russia’s name on it, and Washington is the one holding it together.

Putin opened the meeting by thanking the president. “I would like to thank you and ask you to convey my gratitude to President Trump for arranging our contacts with the Ukrainian side,” he said, according to the Kremlin’s own transcript. “I know that we have achieved a positive result in at least one area: the humanitarian track, particularly with regard to exchanges of detainees held by both sides.”

He thanked First Lady Melania Trump too, by name, for her “active involvement” in the humanitarian pause in Oleshky, a Russian-occupied town in Ukraine’s Kherson region. And he credited “President Trump’s entire team,” the State Department and what he called “the Department of War.”

Say what you want about Putin. He does not hand out credit to American administrations for free.

Families on both sides are waiting on a number

The swap itself was agreed in principle in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. Kushner announced it on 𝕏 the moment the second day of talks wrapped.

“This will reunite families, build trust, and create momentum toward peace,” he wrote. At a briefing afterward he said the numbers would be finalized the next day, Interfax-Ukraine reported. Rustem Umerov, who leads Ukraine’s delegation, thanked the American envoys and confirmed the exchange.

How big? Zelensky put it in a range. Speaking in Dublin, he described swapping 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners of war per side and said, “That would be a very positive thing, and I don’t see any reasons for Russia to not accept that proposal,” according to The Irish Times. Earlier he had floated “1,000 for 1,000, maybe 1,500 for 1,500.”

After Thursday’s meeting, Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov told reporters that Moscow supports the Abu Dhabi initiative and that the exact parameters “are currently being finalised.” He also gave a number that puts this in perspective: since 2025 there have been 35 exchanges between the two countries, involving roughly 5,000 people on each side. If the new deal lands anywhere near Zelensky’s range, one swap would equal about a fifth of everything traded in nearly two years.

Russia has said the exchange could happen within two to three weeks, according to DW. For a mother in Kharkiv or Kursk, that is the only part of this story that matters.

The envoys made two capitals in one day

Witkoff was blunt about what the Kremlin visit was for. “We are resetting the trilateral talks,” he told Putin. “I know I speak for the President, who feels strongly that we have to solve this conflict.” He called the Abu Dhabi sessions “very positive” and “purposeful,” said both delegations were “trying to find solutions,” and said he hoped to announce the next three-way meeting soon, this time with the Europeans at the table.

Kushner laid out where things stand without sugarcoating it. All three delegations in Abu Dhabi, plus the Europeans who were there in the UAE, “were all in agreement that they want the war to end,” he said. “They agreed on many of the principles but are still apart on some of the ways to accomplish that.”

Then the two of them got back on the plane. By Thursday night they were at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnell, west of Dublin, sitting down with Zelensky, who was in Ireland for a summit of leaders from more than 45 countries, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

That is shuttle diplomacy the old-fashioned way: hear one side, fly to the other, keep the deal from going cold. In the space of a month, the Oleshky pause and the Abu Dhabi swap both ran through Washington, and the two sides are back at a table they had walked away from in February.

Putin’s test over one Donbas town

The hard part is still the hard part, and Putin went right at it. He said that for Russia there is “only one line of demarcation,” the state border, and dismissed Ukraine’s talk of contested “grey zones” as something that “will always be a bone of contention.”

Then he made an offer built on the Oleshky model. He pointed to Konstantinovka, which Ukrainians call Kostiantynivka, a town in Donetsk that sits inside what Ukraine considers its main line of defense. He said 400 to 500 civilians remain there and proposed a humanitarian evacuation with Russian, Ukrainian, European and American reporters invited to watch, plus human-rights officials from both countries. Russia needs five days to demine the roads in, he said.

He was open about the second purpose. “At the same time, we will see who actually controls the town,” Putin said.

Ushakov said the American envoys “actively supported” applying the Oleshky approach there and that detailed talks with U.S. representatives would begin. Getting civilians out of a front-line town is worth doing on its own. Whether Kyiv accepts a plan that doubles as a map test is a separate question, and it is one Witkoff and Kushner were carrying to Zelensky Thursday night.

Europe wants a seat, and Washington is offering one

The other shift this week is Europe. Zelensky has been pressing European leaders to pick specific people to represent them, “and we need to do it in November,” he said in Dublin, according to Euronews. Kushner told Putin there has been “a big change with the Europeans” and that moving to a multilateral format would help “end this war but also to make sure that we avoid any future wars as well.”

Ukraine’s own negotiators sound hopeful. David Arakhamia, who leads Zelensky’s party in parliament, said after Abu Dhabi that there is a chance of reaching agreements by the end of the year, per Ukrainska Pravda.

Nobody serious thinks the land question gets settled over a weekend. But a week ago the two sides weren’t talking at all. Now they have a prisoner swap in principle, a proposed second humanitarian corridor, and an American team that went from Abu Dhabi to Moscow to Dublin in about 48 hours to keep it all moving. Thousands of soldiers may be home before Christmas because of it.