Melania Trump hosts Russian and Ukrainian officials at the White House

Melania Trump will host officials from Moscow and Kyiv at the White House on Thursday, days before the first trilateral talks on the Ukraine war since February convene in Abu Dhabi. Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin's adviser for international economic cooperation, and human rights ombudsman Yana Lantratova plan to attend, provided logistical arrangements hold, according to a TASS report citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Ukraine's ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets confirmed he is travelling to Washington for the meeting as well.

The channel running through the First Lady's office opened last month, when she announced a localised truce around Oleshky, a Russian-occupied town on the southern front whose residents had endured weeks without food or medicine. The halt in fighting was respected by both sides; roads were demined and residents departed for either Ukraine or Russia. On Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded her the Order of Princess Olga, First Class, citing her "significant personal contribution to humanitarian support for Ukraine". Her office said she "independently initiated engagement" to secure the ceasefire and called the initiative "unprecedented" for an American First Lady.

What is notable is where the working channel to the Kremlin turns out to sit. The State Department does not appear anywhere in the sequence: Moscow agreed to the Oleshky truce with the First Lady's office, and the same office is now convening Russian officials in the White House ahead of the Abu Dhabi round. Meanwhile Zelenskyy described "very detailed, hour-and-a-half-long" conversations with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, neither of them a career diplomat, ahead of next week's meeting.

The backdrop is a war in its fifth year and a recent rapprochement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that has raised concerns in Kyiv and European capitals that Washington could negotiate over Ukraine's head. Melania Trump has also been involved in efforts to return Ukrainian children taken to Russia, one of the few areas where Moscow and Kyiv have sustained any contact at all. Lubinets, en route to Washington, asked his Facebook followers what single message they would convey to the First Lady — a public framing that underlined who is now regarded as the person who delivers.

She was expected to speak at the White House at 11:00 am on Thursday. The Kremlin's delegation to Abu Dhabi, led by Vladimir Medinsky, will include several Russian agencies; the US side has not been named, but the First Lady already has what Foggy Bottom does not: a ceasefire the Russians actually kept.