Russia-Ukraine peace talks resume in Abu Dhabi under US mediation, Digi Mart USA News: Russian and Ukrainian delegations are scheduled to take part on Tuesday in talks in Abu Dhabi under American mediation, the first such round since February, after President Donald Trump suggested a peace agreement was possible and could include European security.
Several European countries, including France and Germany, as well as the European Commission, have sent representatives to Abu Dhabi. Russia has made clear, however, that it does not want Europeans to take part in negotiations on ending the conflict, which has entered its fifth year.
The war began in February 2022 with what Moscow called a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies have described it as an invasion.
Ukrainian envoys are expected to meet separately with representatives of their European allies to brief them on the talks, Kyiv said, and the trilateral meeting with Washington and Moscow was expected to begin around 06:30 GMT.
“We are doing everything to ensure that Europe is a participant in the diplomatic process,” said Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s negotiators, on Monday. For the first time, the Russian side includes Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and senior army officer Yuri Zhigarlovsky.
The Moscow delegation is again led by Vladimir Medinsky, an adviser to the Kremlin.
Trump, who secretly met last week at the White House with a senior adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has predicted a peace agreement could emerge soon. He promised after returning to office in January 2025 to end the war within 24 hours and regularly expresses optimism, though no progress has been observed.
On Monday he said he saw “a very strong inclination” toward an agreement between the two countries.
Publicly, there is no indication that progress has been made on the main points of contention between Kyiv and Moscow. Putin demands that Kyiv cede the entire Donbas region as a precondition for a peace deal and wants guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that no foreign troops will be deployed there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky categorically refuses to offer territory to Moscow, whose gains on the front lines have slowed and been nearly neutral this year.
Ahead of the two-day Abu Dhabi meeting, Zelensky said Ukraine’s negotiating position had strengthened because of its battlefield achievements, with areas of Donetsk in the Donbas retaken by Kyiv’s troops. A U.S.
official told Reuters that Washington believes Zelensky and Putin could be inclined to accept a compromise on the crucial territorial question, with both making a small concession. A senior Ukrainian official, however, said firmly that Kyiv would not consider such concessions, adding that the territorial question can be discussed only at the presidential level and requires appropriate security guarantees for Ukraine.
The agreement proposed by the Trump administration provides for an end to the war, as Ukraine has demanded, with security guarantees and a roadmap for Ukraine’s integration into the European Union. An energy truce announced last month by Trump, who has expressed displeasure at Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, has not truly taken hold.
Kyiv continues to target refineries while Moscow shells Ukrainian energy infrastructure and cities.
Last week the U.S. president promised a “great deal” covering security guarantees and “more than Ukraine.” “It could concern all of Europe,” he added, without providing further details.
These comments caused an uproar among some European officials, who stressed that any negotiations on European security could take place only with the direct involvement of the governments concerned and that Russia had no say in the European security framework.
One of Trump’s envoys, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, met last week in Brussels with representatives of NATO, the EU and European powers ahead of the Abu Dhabi meeting. In parallel with the talks in the Emirati capital, G7 foreign ministers, meeting since Monday in Paris, are expected to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha is due to join those discussions on Tuesday.
Before flying to France, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Sunday that “progress” had been made on the contours of Europe’s post-conflict security architecture.
Zelensky recently expressed hope that the Democratic Party’s large victory in the U.S. midterm elections, at the expense of Trump’s Republican Party, could lead to greater support from Washington for Kyiv, while the U.S.
president has suspended direct military aid to Ukraine since returning to the White House.
