In this war the capital of the United Arab Emirates has become a kind of waiting room. On Tuesday, 10 November, delegations from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow sat down there for the third time this year, following rounds in January and February, as Al Jazeera reported. After February the effort stalled. According to CBS News, diplomacy largely froze once President Donald Trump launched, alongside Israel, the war with Iran. Since then the envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have met Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately.
The first day ran for almost four hours, the Associated Press reported. A second was set for Wednesday.
The men at the table
Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, opened with architecture. The aim, he said, was to “create a new framework and a new understanding building upon the different institutions and understandings of the past.” Then he raised the stakes: “We take what’s worked, we try to identify what’s failed, why we’re in this position and hopefully create a new framework that leads us for decades, if not centuries, of peace.”
Centuries is a long unit of time for a war its people count in nights of missiles. That is a reflection, not a finding.
Kyiv sent its spies and its politicians. Rustem Umerov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, leads the delegation with Kyrylo Budanov and David Arakhamia, according to POLITICO; the AP added the deputy Sergiy Kyslytsya. “Our people are waiting to end this war. And we hope that we will achieve the lasting peace for Ukraine,” Umerov said. Across from him, the presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky remarked that Russia’s delegation “has become bigger and more professional,” and hoped the meeting would “advance on the path towards peace in the interests of the people of Russia and the people of Ukraine.”
Europe in the corridor
National security advisers from France, Britain, Germany and Italy flew in, along with officials from NATO, the European Commission and the European Council. They were not expected inside the main negotiating room. Two senior officials who knew the format said so. The Kremlin had objected again, as recently as Monday. So, before the main meeting, the Ukrainians met them and the two American envoys on their own. “We will align our positions and coordinate steps ahead of the next stage of negotiations,” Umerov said, as Euronews reported. Russia said EU representatives might join later, the AP reported. It is a familiar choreography: Europe kept outside the room while its own security is on the table.
Italy owes its chair to a letter. Last week Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni complained to European Council President António Costa that there were too many negotiating formats, and asked EU leaders gathering informally in Dublin to decide “once and for all, who sits at the negotiating table representing the European Union, and with what mandate.” She added: “I am not asking for a seat for Italy in this or that format.” Her diplomatic adviser, Fabrizio Saggio, is in Abu Dhabi all the same.
European anxiety has a source. Last week Kushner said the discussions would address a “new European security architecture”, the phrase Russian officials often use when they mean a smaller NATO presence in front-line states and caps on Ukraine’s army. France insists there can be no lasting peace without addressing European security. Germany’s envoy, Günter Sautter, holds that no such architecture can be discussed until Russia agrees to a ceasefire. On Monday Kushner wrote that a settlement would also require “direct engagement between Russia and our European partners on the broader security arrangements that affect them.”
The price of the Donbas
On Monday a senior American official, briefing on condition of anonymity, said both Moscow and Kyiv had privately shown “a little bit of flexibility” on territory, though he gave no details. “They will not solve the Donetsk issue and the territorial issue until they know what the security architecture is going to be after the war,” he said. Trump spoke of a “very strong inclination” to end the war, said both sides were “tired of fighting,” and suggested Ukraine might come out of it in “a little bit different shape.”
Zelenskyy put it more bluntly. On Telegram he wrote that the Americans had asked whether Kyiv would “trade the Donbas for security”, and that the security on offer was not NATO membership but “something similar.” He has told the same story to Denmark’s DR, Censor.NET reported. “No one believes that Putin will stop if we give up the Donbas,” he said. “He might pause — but then he will return in a year, two years or five years. And who will be to blame then?”
According to US media reports, the ideas under discussion include guarantees modelled on NATO’s Articles 4 and 5, a revived NATO-Russia Council (suspended since 2022) and a sanctions “snapback” if Russia breaks a ceasefire. Territory would come last.
Russia holds roughly 20 percent of Ukraine. Moscow wants Kyiv to recognise its claim to Crimea and to Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and to withdraw even from the parts it has never occupied. It also wants Ukraine to give up on NATO, accept limits on its armed forces and lift restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated church. Kyiv wants the original border back. It wants a ceasefire first, and says territory can be settled only by Putin and Zelenskyy meeting face to face.
Lavrov’s answer
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, answered from Moscow. He rejected the European demand for a ceasefire, accusing Brussels of trying to “buy time” for Kyiv. “We will not agree to this,” he said.
Zelenskyy still called the first day “constructive and quite substantive.” The sides had “managed to discuss the necessity and possible parameters of humanitarian measures,” including another prisoner exchange, and the substance of security guarantees. Ukraine, he said, needed “practical mechanisms to prevent any recurrence of the war.”
Meanwhile the strikes go on, as they did on the eve of the talks. “Russia is trying to divide Ukraine along the Dnipro River and make life as difficult as possible for people – for our cities and villages,” Zelenskyy said in his Monday evening address, describing attacks on bridges and the power grid.
In October, Melania Trump’s office announced a temporary humanitarian ceasefire for the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. It lasted from 28 October to 1 November. Five days, in one city.