US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff are set to travel to Norway this week for the next round of negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expected to attend, Reuters reported late on October 19, citing three people familiar with the matter. The schedule is described as tentative and subject to change, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Norway talks, if they proceed as planned, would mark one of the highest-level diplomatic engagements on the war in recent months — and they arrive at a moment of unusual strain between Washington and Kyiv, even as both sides insist they want a negotiated end to the fighting.

What Reuters reported

According to the Reuters report, published on October 19, 2026, Kushner and Witkoff will travel to Norway for negotiations "on ending the war in Ukraine." Two of the three sources said they expected Zelensky to attend the meetings. The talks come amid visibly increased tensions between Washington and Kyiv over a cluster of disputes: Ukraine's claims that the United States throttled its Starshield satellite communications and limited intelligence sharing, and Trump's public accusation that Zelensky is prolonging the war.

Zelensky had said in recent days that the speed of Ukraine's Starshield satellite system was reduced as a result of a US policy decision and that Washington had limited intelligence sharing. US officials have denied both allegations. Reuters reported last week that the order to limit Starshield came from within the White House. Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX produces the system, said on X that because Starshield is owned and controlled by the US government, any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military or the president. Ukraine uses Starshield, produced by SpaceX, for battlefield communications and drone operations; the US Defense Department holds the contract but allows Ukraine to use the system. Ukrainian officials have said the throttling left Ukraine unable to intercept Russian strikes, contributing to civilian deaths.

How this week's diplomacy got here

The Norway trip did not materialize out of nowhere. It follows a burst of shuttle diplomacy over the weekend:

  • On October 18, Zelensky told Bloomberg News he was holding talks with Trump's envoys with a view to arranging a new peace meeting as early as this week. He said he would use a video call with Witkoff and Kushner to discuss a possible time and venue.
  • According to the Kyiv Post, Zelensky held discussions with Witkoff and Kushner in which he said progress depended on the position of the US administration. The engagement came even as Trump accused Zelensky in a Sunday social media post of not wanting to end the war, writing that "Zelensky doesn't care," while insisting he was making great progress toward a peace agreement.
  • Ukraine has signaled concrete willingness to de-escalate. Kyiv expressed readiness to cease strikes on Russian oil refineries if Russia stops attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and Zelensky confirmed the Trump administration had warned Kyiv about a possible cessation of intelligence sharing if strikes on Russian oil refineries continued.
  • On the defensive side, Zelensky has prioritized conversations about deliveries of Patriot air defense systems, and — in a notable softening — expressed gratitude to Washington for resuming intelligence-data sharing, even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied there had ever been a pause.

The deeper policy argument playing out behind the scenes, as described in recent reporting, centers on Ukraine's campaign of strikes against Russian oil refineries — one of Kyiv's most effective tools of economic pressure against Moscow. Trump has pressed Ukraine to halt those strikes, a request US negotiators are said to have made roughly half a dozen times in recent months, with domestic diesel prices and the approaching midterm elections as context. Zelensky balked at the request, derided the US-Russia diesel arrangement as "weak," and warned that intelligence support could be cut — and the White House, for its part, reportedly followed through with the Starshield limitations.

Why Norway?

The choice of Norway is consistent with its long-standing role as a discreet venue for high-stakes diplomacy. Norway has hosted some of history's most consequential back-channel negotiations, and its government maintains working relationships with all sides of the current conflict. For talks this sensitive — three anonymous sources, a tentative schedule, and a White House that declined to confirm anything — the neutral, low-key Norwegian setting is a deliberate choice, allowing envoys to meet without the theatre of a summit in Washington, Moscow, or Kyiv.

The venue also reflects how Trump's foreign policy circle operates. Kushner, though holding no formal government title, has functioned as a central negotiator on the Middle East and now Ukraine files; Witkoff carries the formal Middle East envoy portfolio but has been pulled repeatedly into Ukraine-related shuttle diplomacy. Their pairing in Norway suggests the administration wants to run Ukraine diplomacy through a small, trusted channel.

The backdrop: a war entering another brutal winter

Whatever happens in Norway, the talks will unfold against a grim battlefield picture. Russia has intensified strikes on Ukraine's energy system ahead of winter, including an overnight ballistic-missile attack on Kyiv on October 18–19 that killed one person and injured eight, damaged a shopping centre and a medical facility, and — once again — arrived without the early warning Kyiv says US intelligence partners used to provide. Zelensky has said more than 100 people died in Russian strikes in a single week earlier in October.

There is also competing diplomacy to watch. The Kyiv Post reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a meeting with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month to discuss ending the war "on terms favourable to Moscow," possibly during the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, in November. If both tracks move forward, November could become the busiest diplomatic month of the war.

What to watch next

Three things will determine whether the Norway talks are a genuine inflection point or another round of preliminary theater:

1. Whether Zelensky actually attends. Two sources expect him, but nothing is confirmed, and attendance itself would be a political signal — especially given Trump's recent public attacks on him.

2. Whether the refinery-strikes bargain moves. Ukraine's offer to stop hitting Russian refineries if Russia halts attacks on Ukrainian energy is the closest thing to a workable framework on the table. If Norway produces movement on that, it would be the first reciprocal de-escalation in months.

3. Whether US leverage stabilizes. The Starshield and intelligence-sharing disputes have eroded Kyiv's trust in Washington as an honest broker. Zelensky's public thanks for resumed intelligence sharing suggest a thaw, but the three-day blackout and the public feud are fresh wounds. Norway will be a test of whether the two sides can rebuild enough working trust to negotiate seriously.

For now, the talks remain, in Reuters' careful wording, tentative. But after a month of escalating threats, throttled satellites, and public accusations, even a tentative meeting — with Kushner and Witkoff flying to Norway and Zelensky expected at the table — counts as trending per news coverage for a reason: it is the first serious signal that the diplomacy track is still alive.

Sources: Reuters (October 19, 2026); Bloomberg News (October 18, 2026); Kyiv Post; kyiv24.com. This is a developing story and details may change as officials confirm the schedule.

Related reading: Trump accuses Zelensky of prolonging the war as the US-Ukraine feud explodes over sanctions · Zelensky says a US intelligence blackout left Ukraine blind to Russian missiles for 3 days · Bessent reveals the US asked Europe for India-China tariffs over Russian oil — and allies refused