A new round of peace talks between the United States, Ukraine and Russia is scheduled to begin in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, with the Trump administration renewing its desire to end the nearly five-year conflict after announcing significant concessions to Russia.
Russia has made clear it wants the negotiations, the first of their kind since February, to be strictly tripartite, while national security advisers from several European countries and officials from NATO and the European Union are also scheduled to hold separate meetings in the UAE capital.
“We are working hard to find a negotiated solution that can achieve lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine,” Jared Kushner, a US negotiator and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, said on Monday.
U.S. officials underscored that stance Monday, calling the talks a new starting point in defining an end to the war, including discussions on security and a “postwar security architecture.”
“When we end this war, we need to figure out a way to make sure it’s really the final end to the war. We believe that’s what Ukraine wants. We believe that’s what Europe wants, and we believe that’s what Russia wants,” one official said.
But many, especially in Europe, question Moscow’s intentions. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Karas said on Monday there was little sign that Russia was prepared to negotiate in good faith.
However, the U.S. official also said it was up to President Trump to decide whether to provide U.S. security as part of peace negotiations.
The U.S. will be represented by Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, while Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s foreign intelligence chief and top negotiator, will lead the Ukrainian delegation, according to people familiar with the talks.
According to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, Russia is sending representatives including Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, as well as Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, Director of Military Intelligence Igor Kostyukov, and Chief of the General Staff Yuri Zhigallovsky.
Umerov said on Monday that representatives of the E4 group from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, as well as officials from NATO and the European Commission, would also be in Abu Dhabi. “We will hold separate coordination meetings with our European partners,” Umerov added.
Asked about the presence of European officials in Abu Dhabi, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Europe had its own communication channels with Kiev and the United States, but reaffirmed that the negotiations were “tripartite negotiations involving Russia and Ukraine, with the United States acting as a mediator.”
Notably, these talks come amid renewed calls for European countries to take a more active role in negotiations over Ukraine’s future and security across the region, after President Trump touted a new security deal for Ukraine that “could involve the whole of Europe.”
“European countries will be fully represented,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrault told French media on Sunday. “In recent weeks, European countries have made their voices heard, expressing to the American mediator that no discussion affecting the future of the continent can ignore our expectations and demands,” he added.
Europe has long been wary of U.S.-brokered peace deals negotiated without U.S. involvement, and Umerov said Monday that Ukraine is “doing everything we can to ensure Europe’s participation in the diplomatic process.”
Mr. Kushner said the talks would remain tripartite, but he would also meet with Mr. Witkoff and his European partners and continue the “close consultation and coordination that we have had over the past several weeks on European security and Ukraine’s postwar future.”
“Ultimately, achieving a comprehensive and lasting settlement will also require direct engagement between Russia and its European partners on a wide range of security agreements that affect both countries,” Kushner wrote in a post on X.
This is the fourth time the tripartite talks have been held. All ended without any significant progress.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the latest tripartite talks, held in February in Geneva, Switzerland, had not reached Ukraine’s goals, saying “sensitive political issues, possible compromises, and the necessary summit have not yet been fully finalized.”
The US subsequently postponed the trilateral talks, which were scheduled to be held in March, due to the Iran war.
Putin continues to make extremist demands that Kiev has rejected, including Russia’s control of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, reducing the size of Ukraine’s military and abandoning Kiev’s ambitions to join NATO.
John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said expectations for the Abu Dhabi talks should be “very modest.”
“This is simply being done because President Putin wants to give President Trump a reason to continue distancing himself from Ukraine,” Herbst wrote last week.
Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, and while victory on the battlefield remains elusive, Moscow is escalating airstrikes with deadly consequences for Ukrainians.
Last Monday, Russia dropped several bombs on a school building used as a shelter and relief center in Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 55 people, in one of the deadliest single incidents of the war so far. Ukraine’s civilian death toll is the highest since the war began, with more than 2,700 people killed in Russian airstrikes so far this year, according to global conflict monitoring group ACLED.
And continuing a pattern seen in previous years, Russian drones and missiles are already hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, but more intensely and earlier than in other winters, analysts say. Zelenskyy said Russia’s attack on the power grid left more than 600,000 people in the Dnipropetrovsk region without power overnight into Sunday, as temperatures plummeted and winter approached.
Over the past few months, Russia has been deploying Shahed drones, faster, jet-powered aircraft that are harder to shoot down. At the same time, more missiles are slipping past Ukraine’s air defenses as Kiev grapples with a chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles, one of the few defensive weapons capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
Where does the United States stand on war, and could the midterm elections change that?
While the Biden administration has positioned the United States as Ukraine’s single largest donor and strongest ally, the Trump administration’s relationship with Kyiv has clearly become more complex. It stopped providing financial aid to Ukraine in early 2025, but the intelligence and technical assistance it still provides has also come under strain in recent weeks.
Mr. Zelenskyy last month accused Western allies of failing to provide intelligence warning before multiple ballistic missile attacks, an allegation that the Trump administration has denied.
Also in October, Ukraine was unable to use StarShield, the military version of Elon Musk’s Starlink service, which is vital to military operations, after speed limits were imposed on satellite terminals. Trump denied approving the decision, but Musk said in a social media post that the Trump administration was behind the ban.
Underpinning this recent tension is President Trump’s sensitivity to soaring gas prices, which rose in the wake of the Iran war and contributed to the Republican party’s landslide defeat in last week’s midterm elections.
He pressured Zelenskiy to accept a short-term “energy ceasefire,” expressing his willingness to strike business deals with Moscow, including supplying Russian diesel to the market, in a hasty break from sanctions aimed at punishing and isolating Russia’s economy.
So, as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, President Zelenskiy has publicly stated that he hopes a “blue wave” can strengthen U.S. support for Ukraine because his party “has been very clear about supporting Ukraine and helping Ukraine.”
However, it remains unclear whether the midterm elections will result in any substantive change in US policy towards Kiev. In a Sunday interview on “60 Minutes,” Trump declined to say whether he trusted Zelensky or Putin more and suggested Ukraine might need to cede some territory.
“In the end, Ukraine will look a little different,” he said, outlining a scenario that Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected.
CNN’s Kit Maher, Charlotte Reck, Ivana Kottasova, Tim Lister, Matthew Chance, Victoria Butenko and Lauren Kent contributed reporting.
