US-led peace talks with Russia and Ukraine start in Abu Dhabi

Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Bloomberg News on Nov 10, 2026

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A new round of talks to end the war in Ukraine kicked off on Tuesday as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to restart the peace process even as Russia shows no sign it’s willing to compromise.

The talks involving Russian and Ukrainian officials got under way in Abu Dhabi, with Trump’s negotiators, special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner leading U.S. mediation efforts.

Representatives of the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission met with the Ukrainian delegation earlier on Tuesday to align positions ahead of the discussions, Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian delegation said in a post on X social media platform. They were joined by Witkoff and Kushner, he said.

“Our key priorities are to end hostilities, secure reliable post-war security guarantees, ensure Ukraine’s economic recovery and development, and advance humanitarian efforts,” Umerov said in the post. “We are working to make as much progress as possible on these issues and bring peace closer.”

Russia hopes the meeting will “allow us to move forward on the path to peace,” Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation, said in televised comments at the start of the talks.

The discussions scheduled to take place over two days mark a resumption of talks put on hold in February when the Trump administration’s focus shifted to the Iran war. And they represent the first round of negotiations on Ukraine since Trump’s Republican Party lost control of Congress in U.S. midterm elections.

The Russian and Ukrainian envoys will discuss territorial issues and proposals for ceasefire monitoring in the United Arab Emirates, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

The first session would focus on ceasefire monitoring and post-war security, including mechanisms for security consultations, crisis communications and de-escalation measures. A second session would touch on territorial issues, with the official saying that both sides had shown flexibility in recent days, without providing details.

The diplomatic push comes with little sign of de-escalation with Russia’s full-scale invasion deep into its fifth year. Moscow has stepped up missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure ahead of winter, while fighting continues along the frontline and Kyiv regularly strikes targets deep inside Russia as a way of curbing the Kremlin’s war revenue.

The U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity Monday, said there had been daily discussions with both Russia and Ukraine in the run-up to the trilateral meeting and expressed cautious optimism representatives would make progress.

The official said the U.S. team had asked Russia for its consent for the U.S. and Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine similar to those provided under Articles 4 and 5 of the NATO treaty, in which an attack on any member country is treated as an attack on the alliance as a whole. Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Trump’s resumed efforts to end the war have reignited worries in Kyiv and allied capitals that the U.S. will try to force territorial concessions or changes to Europe’s security architecture. Trump told reporters last week, after meeting Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, that there could be a “big agreement” that is “going to involve more than Ukraine” and “might involve all of Europe,” without elaborating.

Still, despite the new diplomacy, Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly stuck to longstanding demands for Ukraine to surrender broad swaths of territory and to rule out ever joining NATO — demands rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

European nations want Russia to halt its war against Ukraine before entertaining any discussion about the continent’s broader security architecture, people familiar with the matter said. The U.S. official on Monday cast doubt on existing security arrangements, saying that negotiators would need to build a new framework without specifying what that could entail.

Putin agreed to resume the trilateral talks on a potential peace deal at a Kremlin meeting with Witkoff in October. He also held phone talks with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre last month, the first direct contact between Putin and top European leaders allied with Kyiv since July last year.