U.S.-Brokered Ukraine Talks Open in Abu Dhabi, Hours After Strikes Cut Power in Six Regions

U.S.-brokered Ukraine talks opened Tuesday, Nov. 10, in Abu Dhabi, the first meeting of Russian, Ukrainian and American delegations since February, as overnight strikes cut electricity in six Ukrainian regions. The two-day session is the latest attempt by the Trump administration‘s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, to push the war in Ukraine, which has now run more than 56 months, toward some form of settlement.

Expectations for a breakthrough remain low. A U.S. official, speaking on the eve of the talks, told reporters that Moscow and Kyiv were privately showing “a little bit of flexibility” on who would control Ukraine’s eastern regions after the war, even as both sides’ public positions have barely moved. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, said the discussions would focus on the “postwar security concerns” of both countries.

What is on the table in Abu Dhabi

The White House said before the session that the talks would focus on future security guarantees. Russia treats NATO as a threat. Ukraine wants arrangements that would prevent another invasion. Kushner wrote on X that an important part of the process was “encouraging all parties to begin thinking seriously about what comes after the war,” and that the talks might, at most, “build momentum toward the next phase of negotiations.”

The most immediate territorial fight is over Donetsk, which is now mostly occupied by Russia. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine give up the parts of the region it still holds. Kyiv wants to freeze the contact line and keep those sections, which it calls essential to its future security. The U.S. official said that public standoff would not be resolved until the sides know “what the security architecture is going to be after the war,” and that “we’re not going to be able to finalise one without the other.”

For Ukraine, that architecture may include a promise that allies would come to its aid if it is attacked again. For Russia, it could include a longstanding demand that NATO roll back in eastern Europe, a prospect that alarms European governments. Officials have floated security consultations, crisis hotlines, “reciprocal de-escalation measures” and a revival of the NATO-Russia Council, which has been largely paused since 2022.

Those ideas sit far apart from the terms each capital has set in public. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the four regions Moscow illegally annexed in 2022 without capturing them in full, give up its NATO aspirations, limit the size of its armed forces and ease restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church. He has warned that he will use force if Kyiv refuses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out handing over territory Russia has not taken, and has rejected limits on Ukraine’s military or on its alliances.

Days from the end of one U.S.-mediated trilateral round in 2026 to the start of the next. The January and February sessions came about two weeks apart. The gap after Geneva ran 265 days, a TBR calculation from the dates reported by AP, BBC and DW. Source: AP, BBC and DW; chart: The Boston Report.

Europe wants in, and is split on a new security order

European governments were largely left out of earlier rounds and have spent the past week pressing for a seat. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France, the United Kingdom and Germany “will indeed be in the meeting room.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, however, said Monday that any “meaningful discussions about Europe’s security architecture” should wait until a ceasefire and “must take place in an appropriate forum, in particular with NATO Allies and EU members.” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was blunter: “For Europe, it is clear: we do not need to establish a new security architecture for Europe.”

U.S., European and Ukrainian negotiators who met ahead of the trilateral session issued a statement expressing a “shared commitment to a strong post-war European security architecture” and saying “a strong NATO will remain central to Euro-Atlantic collective defense,” Deutsche Welle reported. It is not clear that every party means the same thing by those words. EU negotiators are not expected to sit in the main talks with Russia, according to DW. The U.S. official said Washington would propose moving later into a multilateral format that brings the Europeans in, while acknowledging that “the Russians have a bad taste in their mouth with the Europeans.”

France said last weekend that European representatives would join the Abu Dhabi meetings, and G7 foreign ministers met in Paris as Europe sought a louder voice in the U.S.-led process. Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he wants Europe in the talks and has warned of a “Yalta 2.0,” a reference to the 1945 conference at which Allied leaders and the Soviet Union redrew Europe’s map.

After meeting Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Washington last week, Trump touted a forthcoming “big, beautiful agreement” on Ukraine that “might involve all of Europe,” the BBC reported. Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told the BBC he believes Trump wants “a quick deal at the expense of Ukraine,” which Kyiv would reject. He argued that the only way to get Putin into real negotiations is more pressure through sanctions and deep strikes, and he pointed to Trump’s deal to buy diesel from Russia as something that “only encourages Moscow to continue the war.”

Who is in the room, and what happened overnight

Ukraine’s delegation is led by Rustem Umerov, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service and Kyiv’s chief negotiator. Also reported in the team are Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov; his deputy, Sergiy Kyslytsya; and Davyd Arakhamia, the parliamentary leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party. Umerov said the first meeting would be with representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission, joined by Witkoff and Kushner, “to align our positions and coordinate our steps ahead of the next stage of negotiations.”

Russia’s delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, a presidential aide who has headed Moscow’s talks since 2022. Other members include deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov, and Yuri Zhigarlovsky, a deputy chief in the General Staff’s operational department, according to BBC and DW.

Away from Abu Dhabi, the fighting did not pause. Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s grid operator, said Tuesday that Russian strikes had hit energy facilities in eight regions overnight and left people without power in the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions. Prime Minister Sergiy Koretsky said the overnight strikes killed two people in the central city of Ladyzhyn, Deutsche Welle reported. Zelenskyy said Saturday that Moscow wanted to raise the pressure on Kyiv ahead of the talks. He traveled Tuesday to Denmark to meet Nordic leaders on military support, air defense and energy security, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s office said.

The last trilateral rounds this year were held in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 23-24 and Feb. 4-5, and in Geneva on Feb. 17-18. They ended without a breakthrough. The BBC reported that the U.S.-Israel war on Iran then pulled Washington’s attention away, and no further trilateral meetings were held until this week, a gap of 265 days by TBR’s count from the close of the Geneva round to Tuesday’s opening. Kushner, writing on X, said the United States was “approaching these discussions with determination and realism.”

Sources

• BBC: Ukraine peace talks resume in Abu Dhabi after months-long pause
• AP: U.S.-mediated talks on ending Russia-Ukraine war begin in Abu Dhabi
• Deutsche Welle: U.S., Russia and Ukraine start talks in Abu Dhabi
• The Washington Post: Russia and Ukraine begin U.S.-backed peace talks in Abu Dhabi