Witkoff and Kushner walked into the Kremlin with a plan nobody has seen: silence over Kyiv - exactly three days

A column of American vehicles drove into the Kremlin this afternoon, carrying two men who hold no diplomatic title of the old kind: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. One is a real estate dealer, the other is the American president's son-in-law. These are the people carrying what Donald Trump called "a proposal for ending the war".

None of the details of the proposal have been published. Not one. We know a document exists, we know who is carrying it and we know where it was taken - but what it says, nobody outside that room knows. That matters, because a peace plan whose contents are unknown even to the people who will live under it is not a plan, it is an offer.

Witkoff and Kushner landed in Moscow around midday. They were met at the airport by Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president's special envoy - a man from a financial background, not a military one. The Kremlin confirmed Putin would speak with the American delegation. After Moscow, the same envoys are due to fly to Kyiv and sit down there with Volodymyr Zelensky.

Three days of silence - and not one day more

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Putin had ordered a three-day pause in the strikes on Kyiv. The pause begins at midnight on 5 September. According to Peskov, the decision is linked to the preparation and holding of the American negotiators' contacts while they are in the Ukrainian capital.

Watch the wording, because the whole story is in it: this is not a ceasefire. It is not a halt to the fighting on the front. It is a limited, time-defined pause over one single city - and precisely while American guests are staying in it. The safety of the envoys is guaranteed. The safety of Donbas is not mentioned.

Zelensky, for his part, announced even before Putin's decision that Ukraine would carry out no air strikes for the duration of the visits. He promised Kyiv would allow "normal functioning of Russian airspace" so Witkoff and Kushner could reach Moscow safely, then asked Russia to do the same while they are in Kyiv. And he got it - for three days.

So both sides can stop shooting whenever they decide to. That is not a technical question, nor one of logistics. It is a decision, and today we saw how fast it gets taken when there is a reason. The reason, in this case, was two passengers on one aircraft.

The Balkans know this scene up close. Here too there were peace plans that arrived on foreign planes, were negotiated in someone else's buildings and signed in letters the local population read only after everything had been settled. Dayton was not written in Bosnia. Prespa was not written at Prespa. Who read those texts before they became binding?

The question left is not whether Putin will accept the plan. The question is what it says - and how long the pause lasts once the plane takes off again.