The United States, Ukraine and Russia held their first round of trilateral talks in about nine months in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, aimed at ending the war that began when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a continuation and full-scale conflict. invasion of neighboring nation.
After the first of two days of talks focused on security guarantees — a long-standing demand of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — it was clear that neither side expected an imminent breakthrough, but Zelenskyy called the discussions “constructive and quite substantive.”
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said in an article on
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Kushner said this round of negotiations in the UAE capital was only a first step, but could, he said, “create momentum” toward future negotiations. He also suggested that a future deal would involve a security arrangement involving European countries and Russia.
But Russia and Ukraine appeared to put the brakes on this initiative after Tuesday’s round of negotiations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow had rejected European demands for a ceasefire in Ukraine, accusing Brussels, where the European Union is based, of trying to “buy time” for kyiv.
“We will not accept this,” he said.
Lavrov said Moscow does not want to prevent the United States from engaging with Europe in the war in Ukraine, but that Russia does not consider that to be the best approach.
Grigori SYSOYEV/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP/Getty 
Ukraine says an immediate ceasefire is the necessary first step toward negotiating a broader settlement and that a direct meeting between Putin and Zelensky is the only way to resolve territorial issues.
Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post that the United States had asked whether kyiv would be willing to “trade Donbass for security,” referring to a vast eastern region of Ukraine that Russia has largely occupied by force. Ukraine has so far insisted it should be allowed to keep the region as part of a peace deal. But he added that in exchange for the proposed territorial concession, the United States was not willing to agree to Ukraine becoming a member of the NATO alliance, instead suggesting that kyiv should settle for “something similar.”
“No one believes that Putin will stop if we abandon Donbass,” Zelenksyy said. “He might take a break, but then he’ll come back in a year, two years or five years. And then who will be to blame?”
In a later statement, also shared online, Zelenskyy called the first round constructive and said the two sides had “managed to discuss the need and possible parameters of humanitarian measures,” including a possible mutual release of prisoners of war.
“We discussed in detail the content of security guarantees for Ukraine and the foundations of their long-term effectiveness,” he said, adding that Ukraine needed “practical mechanisms to prevent any resurgence of the war.”
Putin has previously said he wants Ukraine to withdraw its troops from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the four regions of Donbass that Moscow declared illegally as territory in September 2022, but never completely captured. He has also long demanded that Ukraine abandon its NATO bid, accept strict limits on its military and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Zelensky has consistently rejected Putin’s demands to cede territories that Russia was unable to conquer on the battlefield. Zelensky also rejected any limits on Ukraine’s military or its agreements with Western partners, which kyiv views as key security guarantees to prevent Moscow from invading again.
The United States, Russia and Ukraine have held three more rounds of trilateral negotiations this year – the first in January and the second in February – but diplomatic efforts were largely stalled after President Trump decided to launch, alongside Israel, the ongoing war with Iran. Since then, Witkoff and Kushner have had several separate meetings with Putin and Zelensky.
In October, first lady Melania Trump’s office said she had been granted a temporary ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine for the Ukrainian town of Oleshky occupied by Russia, for humanitarian reasons. This lasted from October 28 to November 1.
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