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In the capital of the United Arab Emirates, trilateral negotiations with the participation of Russia, Ukraine and the United States, interrupted in February, resumed behind closed doors on Tuesday. At the instigation of Washington, the parties’ statements now more often include the topic of security guarantees for both Russia and Ukraine. Moscow still refuses to discuss a ceasefire, and Kyiv considers the end of the war to be the main condition for further negotiations.
On the first day, negotiations in Abu Dhabi lasted four and a half hours, a TASS correspondent reported. The second round will take place on Wednesday, September 11th.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the first day was very productive, Reuters reports. Rubio himself is not in the UAE capital, but in Paris at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers.
American negotiators in Abu Dhabi, as well as representatives of the Russian and Ukrainian delegations, have not yet made statements.
How the negotiations began
The Russian delegation that arrived in Abu Dhabi was larger than in February. Among the newcomers are the head of the Fifth Service of the FSB, Alexey Komkov, and his deputy, Dmitry Minaev. The Fifth Service is responsible for the activities of the FSB abroad. The delegation also included, for the first time, Deputy Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry Sergei Ryabkov (together with another Deputy Minister Mikhail Galuzin) and Deputy Head of the Information Department of the General Staff Alexander Zorin.
“Our delegation has become larger and even more professional,” noted the expansion of the composition of the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky. He did not explain the new members.
“We are authorized by the President [of Ukraine Vladimir] Zelensky to discuss all issues that our people are waiting for solutions to put an end to this war. And we hope that we will be able to achieve lasting peace,” said the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Rustem Umerov, at the beginning of the meeting.
Meetings in Abu Dhabi are held behind closed doors. Representatives of Russia and Ukraine sat down at the negotiating table for the first time since February. Seated in the center were US presidential special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who met first with Zelensky and then with Russian President Vladimir Putin in October.
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Kushner said at the start of the meeting that the United States has a number of constructive proposals to make progress on a peace settlement, and President Donald Trump is committed to achieving peace. "He asked us to make an extra effort to find a solution that would not only end the war, but would put both sides in a much stronger position," he said.
In October, Witkoff said that American mediators had presented new approaches to a peace settlement, but did not talk about them, and last week, US representatives, including Kushner, held another meeting in Brussels with representatives of Ukraine, NATO and the EU, after which Kushner declared the need for a “broader European security architecture.”
This approach aroused approval from Moscow and wariness from Europe. In Abu Dhabi, before the start of negotiations with Russia, the Ukrainian delegation held a meeting with representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the EU, in which Witkoff and Kushner participated.
After this meeting, Witkoff wrote on the social network X that possible security agreements after the end of the war in Ukraine were discussed and the participants “confirmed their commitment to the formation of a sustainable post-war European security architecture.”
At the same time, a source in the Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi, on condition of anonymity, told reporters that “the Ukrainian settlement, being a critically important issue, is only one of the points of this large-scale discussion.” The source, whose statement was reported by Reuters and Russian agencies, called the main goal “a comprehensive and indivisible security architecture for the entire continent.”
On the first day of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the parties actually discussed security guarantees, Russian demands and issues of the post-war future, a source close to the Ukrainian delegation confirmed to the Ukrayinska Pravda publication. According to him, the parties focused on the issues of security guarantees for Ukraine and Europe as a whole, and Russia’s demands for security guarantees for it were discussed separately.
“The key position of the Ukrainian side is that there must first be an end to the war. Only after this is it possible to move on to the formation of a new security architecture in Europe, which should ensure long-term stability and prevent a repetition of aggression,” said the interlocutor of Ukrayinska Pravda.
Zelensky in the evening called the first round “constructive and quite meaningful.” “I just spoke with our team in Abu Dhabi. It's difficult with the Russians. To put it mildly, they are not our best friends,” the President of Ukraine told reporters.
Russia rejects demands from Ukraine and Europe for an immediate cessation of hostilities. “We will not agree to this to enter into another truce, another ceasefire, whatever you call it, without understanding what will happen next,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday. “The idea of formulating clear parameters for the future security architecture and only then moving on to resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict itself is absolutely reasonable,” he said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday that broader discussions on security issues should only take place after a ceasefire has been established.
What the media writes
Negotiators will focus on security guarantees, the goal being to move away from discussions of territorial claims and move on to broader issues of European security in the hope of breaking the impasse, the New York Times wrote yesterday.
American negotiators believe that Zelensky and Putin can compromise on a key issue - territorial, and each side will give up some of their positions, an American official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Under the proposed deal, Ukraine could achieve an end to the war, security guarantees and the development of a road map for EU membership.
A senior Ukrainian official rejected the possibility that the government would make such concessions, Reuters notes. According to him, the territorial issue can only be discussed at the level of state leaders and exclusively in the context of providing Ukraine with appropriate security guarantees.
In the final weeks before the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russian refineries, and Russia intensified attacks on the Ukrainian energy sector. Despite the escalation, US President Donald Trump followed Kushner last week in saying that a “massive agreement that would affect more than just Ukraine” could be reached.
“You could even say that it could cover the whole of Europe. This will be a grandiose, wonderful agreement, and everyone will be absolutely delighted,” Trump, who has repeatedly announced the imminent achievement of a deal that would end the war in Ukraine, told reporters.
His words provoked a negative reaction from a number of European officials, who emphasized that any negotiations on European security should be conducted with the direct participation of the parties, and Russia should not influence the formation of security policy in Europe.
The US Secretary of State on Sunday said there was "progress" in discussions about what a post-conflict security architecture might look like in Europe.
Before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia demanded the withdrawal of NATO forces from countries that joined the alliance after 1997, but NATO rejected this demand.
Photo copyright: Grigory Sysoyev/Sputnik via REUTERS
The White House is expressing “cautious optimism” about the resumption of negotiations, sources told Axios the day before. President Trump and his team expect Putin to become more willing to compromise after the United States suspended sanctions on Russian diesel fuel and took other steps that were positively received in Moscow, the newspaper writes.
“The relationship we have built with Putin will play an important role in these negotiations,” one of the sources said. According to an Axios source, after the meetings in Abu Dhabi, Witkoff and Kushner may travel to Moscow and Kyiv for direct talks with Putin and Zelensky.
“There is a chance to make significant progress towards an agreement and try to reduce differences,” the source said. “It has not been easy to bring the parties back to the negotiating table, but we, as mediators, see promising signs.” According to him, Witkoff and Kushner intend to use the negotiations in Abu Dhabi to “clearly outline” the decisions that Putin and Zelensky will have to make.
Publicly, the parties did not change their positions. Russia insists on control over the entire Donbass, while Ukraine advocates dividing the territories along the front line, recalls Axios. However, as the publication notes, in private conversations, American officials note that in recent weeks both sides have “showed some flexibility” on the territorial issue. According to them, reaching an agreement on the territories is impossible until security guarantees are agreed upon.
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