A fresh round of peace talks between the United States, Ukraine and Russia is under way in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, as the Trump administration renews its drive to end the nearly five-year war — the first trilateral meeting of its kind in more than nine months.
Key Points
- Abu Dhabi Ukraine peace talks — negotiators from the US, Russia and Ukraine opened a two-day session in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, 10 November.
- The talks, the first trilateral meeting since February, will focus on security guarantees for Ukraine and a postwar security framework.
- US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are leading the American delegation, with Rustem Umerov heading Ukraine’s team and Vladimir Medinsky leading Russia’s.
- European officials are in Abu Dhabi for separate meetings, though Russia wants the main talks kept strictly trilateral.
The day began with a meeting between the Ukrainian team, the US envoys and representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission. “Next, we will move to a trilateral format involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia,” Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service and its chief negotiator, said on X. Russia’s chief negotiator is Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin aide who has led Moscow’s team since the first direct peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022, alongside deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin.
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and US negotiator, said at the outset that the hope was “not only to discuss the bilateral issues between the countries, and how do we end the war and bring some good humanitarian relief, but it’s also how do we create the right security relationships between Ukraine and Russia and Europe.” He said on X that he and Witkoff were working on a “negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine within a more stable European security environment.”
What makes these talks different
This is the fourth round of trilateral talks, and all previous rounds have ended without a significant breakthrough. The process had become sidelined in recent months by the US-Israeli war against Iran, and the last trilateral meeting took place in Geneva in February, following two earlier meetings in Abu Dhabi.
The gap between the two sides remains wide. Russia wants territory and guarantees that NATO will not threaten it, while Ukraine demands security guarantees strong enough to prevent future invasions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that, at the initiative of the US, the negotiations would focus on the key elements of a regional security framework. Kushner said on Monday that a comprehensive settlement would also require direct engagement between Russia and European partners “on the broader security arrangements that affect them” — a point Moscow has resisted, saying European officials will not be involved in the main talks.
What happens next
The talks run for two days, on Tuesday and Wednesday, and observers do not expect a breakthrough from this round. But the meeting comes after 1,721 days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and with another winter of war approaching. The immediate backdrop is grim: on Monday, hours before the talks opened, Russia battered Ukraine’s power grid, leaving more than 600,000 people without electricity as Kyiv braces for winter. Whether the strikes harden Kyiv’s position — or push its allies to send more air defences — will be clear within days.
For background on the eve-of-talks strikes, see our report on Russia pounding Ukraine’s power grid hours before the US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi, and on the Kremlin excluding European nations from Ukraine discussions. More in our World News section.
Sources: CNN, “Ukraine peace talks restart after 9 months. What makes them different this time?”; The Hindu, “U.S.-mediated talks on ending war between Russia, Ukraine begin in Abu Dhabi”.