Secret talks instead of transparency: Kyiv is keeping silent about the results of peace negotiations in the U.S., leaving the public in a vacuum

On Saturday, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky reported the arrival in the United States of a Ukrainian delegation for talks with the U.S. President’s special representative Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Zelensky said that by the evening Kyiv time he expected the first reports on the meetings.

The Head of the President’s Office Kyrylo Budanov, who went to the United States together with the leader of the “Servant of the People” faction Davyd Arakhamia and the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov, also announced an “important conversation” with American partners about the details of a peace agreement and listed the participants: Witkoff, Kushner, and Daniel Driscoll.

However, by Sunday evening, there still appeared neither statements, nor confirmations, nor even short comments on the results of the talks: both Kyiv and Washington are silent. The usual “leaks” in Western media are not appearing either. For meetings of this level, this looks at least strange — usually the sides try to fix at least the framework of the conversation, show progress, or обозначить disagreements.

The silence is especially striking against the background of problems in the negotiations that have already been publicly. First, the territorial question: Ukraine refuses to withdraw troops from Donbas, which, apparently, may be part of Trump’s plan. Second, the issue of security guarantees: Kyiv insists on the presence of Western troops with U.S. guarantees, but Trump is not giving such guarantees yet. And this is only what is said publicly — there may be more potential “minefields.”

Western media previously reported that Witkoff and Kushner plan to bring new proposals to Moscow by the end of January. By this logic, the trip of Budanov, Umerov, and Arakhamia to the United States looks like an attempt to coordinate these “developments” with the Ukrainian side in advance. But if the negotiations are indeed going according to plan, then why for the second day is there not the slightest public clarity?

For now, the impression is forming that the Ukrainian leadership either does not control communication around critically important negotiations, or is deliberately going into silence in order not to explain unpleasant details to society. In both cases the result is one: instead of the promised “first reports” — a vacuum, which inevitably generates questions and suspicions that the conversation is going hard and without obvious agreements.