US envoys Witkoff and Kushner arrive in Kyiv after talks with Putin in Moscow

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Kyiv on Sunday in their first official visit to Ukraine as part of a renewed push for peace after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Their trip follows a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, seeking to revive peace talks during escalating aerial attacks by both sides.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Kyiv is ready for a “constructive” discussion with U.S. representatives.

“We are interested in bringing the end of the war closer. Peace is needed. Security guarantees are needed. A just and sustainable postwar peace is needed. Our proposals are prepared,” he said in a post on Telegram.

Washington’s push to end the fighting has lost momentum, with the United States focused for the past six months on the Iran war. The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was in January when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin.

Saturday's meeting in Moscow lasted more than three hours behind closed doors and ended without announcements of any breakthroughs. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, described them afterward as constructive, frank, and useful but didn’t discuss specific outcomes.

While Moscow offered its “comprehensive assessment” of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, Ushakov said, the talks were not purely focused on the war in Ukraine.

“Economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail,” he said.

The air war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified as troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometer (775-mile) front line. Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv.

Putin and Zelenskyy had agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks take place. Still, the two traded fire overnight into Sunday, officials said.

Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed one person and injured at least 10 others overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.

In Zaporizhzhia, drone strikes killed a 74-year-old man and wounded three people, while a drone damaged an apartment building, injuring seven people, in the Khmelnytskyi region.

Ukraine’s air force said Sunday that it intercepted 82 drones out of the 108 launched by Russia overnight, along with six missiles.

In Russia, a man was killed and a woman seriously wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, local authorities in the Belgorod border region said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its air defenses overnight shot down 258 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, occupied Crimea and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.

In Kyiv on Sunday, dozens gathered for a nationwide 9 a.m. moment of silence honoring Ukraine’s fallen soldiers, a daily ritual held in cities across the country.

Among them was Nataliia Lipei, 67, whose son Viktor was killed in December 2022. Despite a health condition, she has traveled from city to city to take part, and she said she hopes the talks in Moscow and Kyiv will finally bring an end to the war.

“I hope these steps and these meetings will definitely produce results, because there has been so much bloodshed and so many deaths here that we have to stop all of this,” she told The Associated Press.

Not everyone shared her hope for the talks. Oleksandr Pastukhov, 27, a video editor who joined the commemoration, was skeptical the envoys’ visit would change anything.

“We’ve already seen delegations like this come here before,” he said. “We’ve seen this so-called ceasefire for three days, which ended after just a couple of hours, and now we’re supposed to naively think that two people will come and change something.”

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff, center, and Jared Kushner, right, arrive in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff, right, Jared Kushner, center, and Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev stand prior to talks at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow, on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

President Vladimir Putin, right, greets U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, prior to talks at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow, on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026. (Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

President Vladimir Putin, background center left, speaks to U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff, center foreground, back to a camera, and Jared Kushner, right, as Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, second left, and Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev attend the talks at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow, on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff, right, and Jared Kushner wait to attend the talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow, on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — An eastern German region was voting Sunday in an election that could bring to power the first far-right state government in the nation’s post-World War II history.

The vote for the state legislature in Saxony-Anhalt, a region of 2.1 million people west of Berlin, has gained outsized prominence because it represents the best chance yet of a governor’s post for the far-right, anti-migration Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

That would be the biggest prize in the party’s 13-year history, at a time of widespread discontent with an unpopular national government that has yet to persuade voters it can get the country’s sluggish economy moving. It would be at least a symbolic blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose center-right party has led Saxony-Anhalt for 24 years.

AfD is the biggest opposition party in Germany’s national parliament and is strongest in the formerly communist and less prosperous east, where Saxony-Anhalt is located. Its candidate for governor, Ulrich Siegmund, declares that “we will write history here.”

Despite consistently strong support, though, its chances of taking power are uncertain even if it finishes well ahead of its opponents.

On Sunday, AfD hopes to win an absolute majority in the state legislature. That would overcome the so-called “firewall” of mainstream parties’ refusal to work with AfD, whose regional branch is one of several classified by the domestic intelligence agency as a proven right-wing extremist group. AfD vehemently rejects accusations of extremism.

The party’s national co-leaders, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, said this week that AfD “wants to implement the law of the land — for example with a view to illegal migration — and ensure that Germany remains worth living in.” They decried other parties’ records and argued in a statement that an absolute majority for AfD is “almost the only chance to change course.”

Merz said an AfD government would be an economic own-goal. “If there were to be an absolute majority for a right-wing populist party next Monday, then international investors will think three times about whether they still invest in Saxony-Anhalt,” he said.

On Saturday, thousands of people gathered in the state capital, Magdeburg, against the prospect of a far-right regional government.

Siegmund says he will only seek election as governor by state lawmakers if AfD wins an absolute majority, arguing that it needs to break a pattern of parties breaking their preelection promises.

Whether it can win that majority is expected to depend in part on whether parties such as the center-left Social Democrats and Greens top the 5% support needed to keep parliamentary seats. If there is no absolute majority for AfD, the party is unlikely to find a coalition partner.

Incumbent governor Sven Schulze, from Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, says he won’t work with the far-right party and his own CDU is “100%” behind him. But, if AfD finishes first yet short of a majority, he’s likely to face a difficult task to put together a stable government.

There has already been one case in which AfD finished first in a state election but didn’t end up governing. That was two years ago in neighboring Thuringia, where a CDU governor took power with a minority government.

Schulze could, in similar circumstances, try to put together some kind of alliance with smaller parties. It’s likely to be a delicate exercise, because it would probably require at least some tacit support from the Left Party, a hard-left party with which the CDU refuses to form coalitions.

Sunday’s vote will be followed on Sept. 20 by two more tricky tests for Merz’s CDU and its main partners in the national government, the Social Democrats.

There are state elections that day in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an eastern region where a center-left government faces a strong challenge from AfD, and in Berlin, currently led by Merz’s party.

Moulson reported from Berlin.

German Chancellor and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party leader Friedrich Merz, left, and Saxony-Anhalt State Governor and top candidate Sven Schulze give a press statement after visiting UPM Biochemicals in Leuna, Germany, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Ulrich Siegmund, top candidate for the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) party and his wife Julia leaving a polling station on a small Schwalbe motorcycle after voting during the Saxony-Anhalt state elections in Tangermuende, eastern Germany, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Ulrich Siegmund, top candidate for the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) party votes at a polling station during the Saxony-Anhalt state elections in Tangermuende, eastern Germany, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Sven Schulze, Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt and state chairman of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt, drops his ballot into the ballot box during the Saxony-Anhalt state election, in Magdeburg, Germany, Sunday Sept. 6, 2026. At left is his wife Kati Schulze. (Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert/dpa via AP)

Ulrich Siegmund, top candidate for the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) party how's his motorcycle keys in party coolers after voting at a polling station during the Saxony-Anhalt state elections in Tangermuende, eastern Germany, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)