Russia and Ukraine to resume US-led peace talks on Wednesday

Ukraine and Russia wrapped up the first day of new U.S.-led peace talks, as Washington and Kyiv’s European allies stressed the importance of credible security guarantees as part of any deal to end the war.

The trilateral discussions in Abu Dhabi ended after more than four hours and will resume on Wednesday. Ukraine regards the talks as constructive so far, according to a person familiar with the discussions, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.

Russian officials haven’t commented on the meeting so far. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are leading U.S. mediation efforts at the first direct talks between the warring sides since February.

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

“Participants emphasized that any future arrangements must respect sovereignty, territorial integrity, independent decision-making, and provide credible security guarantees for Ukraine,” Kushner, Witkoff and the European Commission said in separate statements.

Europeans were unnerved last week by a comment from Kushner suggesting the U.S. was ready to discuss “a broader European security architecture” as part of a peace deal, seemingly bending to a key Kremlin demands. The allies have been adamant that NATO already fulfills this role and that Russia broke any security arrangement by invading Ukraine.

It remains unclear exactly what security guarantees Kyiv’s partners are ready to provide that would also be palatable for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly rejected NATO membership for Ukraine and the presence of any Western troops in the country.

The issue of territorial concessions remains even more intractable. The Kremlin continues to demand that Ukraine surrender control over some its territory in the east that Russian forces have failed to seize in fighting since 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expected a detailed briefing about the talks from his team and partners on Tuesday, in a post on X. He’s meeting Nordic leaders in Denmark at an unofficial working dinner on Tuesday hosted by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, according to statements from her office and her Finnish counterpart Petteri Orpo.

Putin will hold talks with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Lukashenko, Putin’s closest ally, allowed Russia to begin part of the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory.

Trump told CBS News’ 60 Minutes show broadcast on Sunday that Ukraine will emerge from the war with a “little bit different shape.”

The meeting in Abu Dhabi marks a resumption of talks that were put on hold 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 were set to focus initially on ceasefire monitoring and post-war security, including consultation mechanisms, crisis communications and de-escalation measures, a senior U.S. official said Monday. A second session would then touch on territorial issues, with the official saying that both sides had shown flexibility in recent days, without providing details.

The official said the American 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.

“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 his 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 diplomatic push comes amid 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 to try to curb 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 that representatives would make progress.

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’s 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.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected Putin’s public demands for Ukraine to surrender broad swaths of territory.

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.