First US-Ukraine-Russia Talks of the War Open in Abu Dhabi

Delegations from the United States, Ukraine and Russia are arriving in Abu Dhabi for the first trilateral talks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The meeting, scheduled to begin on Friday, marks the first occasion on which representatives of all three countries will sit at the same table to discuss security issues linked to the war.

Confirmation of the talks came in the early hours of Friday following consultations at the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov described those discussions as constructive and said the sides agreed to convene the first session of a trilateral working group on security matters in the United Arab Emirates.

Details of the agenda and format were not made public. It remained unclear whether Ukrainian and Russian officials would meet directly. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the consultations were expected to last two days.

The US delegation in Abu Dhabi is led by Witkoff and Kushner, while Russia is represented by a team headed by General Igor Kostyukov, director of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU. The talks come amid an intensified diplomatic push by the Trump administration, whose envoys have been moving between Kyiv and Moscow in an effort to broker a settlement. Critics have warned that the pace and direction of these efforts risk pressuring Ukraine into an unfavorable agreement. Trump said earlier this week that both Putin and Zelensky would be acting “stupid” if they failed to reach a deal.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Witkoff said negotiations were close but acknowledged that one major unresolved issue remained, without providing specifics. Zelensky, also in Davos, said the future of territories occupied by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine was still disputed, even though the broader peace proposals were nearly finalized. Territorial control has consistently been identified by both sides as the core obstacle. Putin has demanded that Ukraine relinquish areas of Donetsk still under Kyiv’s control, roughly 20% of the region. Zelensky has firmly rejected any concession of land that Ukraine has held since 2022 after prolonged and costly fighting.

Moscow has also insisted that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO and has ruled out the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian territory after any peace agreement. Zelensky said Ukraine was ready for compromise but stressed that Russia must also be prepared to make concessions. He added that postwar security guarantees between Washington and Kyiv were ready in principle, though they would require ratification in both countries if a deal is reached.

Zelensky spoke after a closed-door meeting with Trump in Davos. In a sharply worded address to the forum, the Ukrainian president criticized European leaders for what he described as passivity, accusing them of waiting for direction from Washington rather than taking independent action on Ukraine and other global crises. He said he had delivered the same warning in Davos a year earlier and that Europe had still failed to strengthen its own capacity to act.

Trump, speaking to reporters while flying back to Washington, described his meeting with Zelensky as positive and said the Ukrainian leader had expressed a desire to end the war. At the same time, Trump said similar conversations in the past had not produced results. He claimed that both Kyiv and Moscow wanted an agreement and that concessions were being discussed on all sides, adding that the main sticking point remained borders, an issue that has blocked progress for months.

Trump also said he and Zelensky discussed the humanitarian situation in Ukraine during the winter, as Russian strikes continue to damage energy infrastructure. He described the situation facing civilians as extremely difficult, noting that large parts of Kyiv and other major cities have endured power and heating outages amid sustained attacks, yet continue to endure.