Washington Offers to Rebuild European Security Around Russia's Demands — and Calls It Peace

The US is proposing to renegotiate the post-Cold War European security order at Abu Dhabi, offering Russia sanctions relief and a new NATO-Russia framework. Europe is at the table but not driving.

The United States opened trilateral talks with Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, the first substantive negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv since February. The US framing is ambitious: officials say they want a "final end" to the war, including a new "long-term security architecture" between Russia and Europe. The talks follow joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran and bruising midterm elections that have weakened Trump domestically — context that raises the question of whether Washington is negotiating from strategic vision or political need.

The substance on offer is remarkable in its scope. US officials floated reviving the NATO-Russia Council suspended after the 2022 invasion, potentially lifting sanctions, and — most strikingly — discussed security guarantees for Ukraine "effectively very similar to NATO" article 5. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and lead negotiator, described the framework in terms of "stronger consultation, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency." These are diplomatic abstractions that could mean anything from a genuine security umbrella to a face-saving formula that binds no one. European leaders are present but visibly uneasy. Delegations from Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and the EU met separately with Ukraine and the US before the trilateral session, issuing a joint statement insisting on sovereignty, territorial integrity, and credible guarantees. But the dynamic is clear: Europe is reacting to American proposals, not shaping them. Italy's Giorgia Meloni complained about the "disorderly" process. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas was blunter: "So far they have just been pretending that they negotiate because we haven't seen any goodwill from the Russian side." The historical echo is loud. In December 2021, Russia issued an ultimatum to NATO demanding a ban on expansion, a rollback of troops to pre-1997 borders, and limits on missile placement. NATO rejected it. Russia invaded Ukraine less than a month later. Now, a US administration is entertaining the premise of those demands — not as an ultimatum to reject, but as the starting point for a deal. Trump himself has said Ukraine would likely cede territory and end up with a "little bit different shape." The security guarantee question is where this either becomes real or collapses into theater. Critics note that NATO's article 5 itself does not oblige member states to militarily defend allies — it requires consultation and response, which can mean many things. A US bilateral guarantee outside NATO's structure would be even less binding and more subject to the political winds of whichever administration holds power. The administration official's own language — "it would be up to Donald Trump and Zelenskyy to discuss" — underscores how personal and contingent any such commitment would be. The extraction pattern here runs in multiple directions. Russia extracts territorial and strategic concessions simply by maintaining the war and waiting for Western fatigue. The US extracts diplomatic prestige and a potential "big, beautiful agreement" at the cost of European agency and Ukrainian sovereignty. Europe bears the strategic risk of a redrawn security architecture it did not design and may not trust. Ukraine faces the possibility of trading land for guarantees whose enforceability is untested and whose durability depends on US domestic politics. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed "there's been some advances made in what that architecture should look" like, while acknowledging "we obviously have to get past the conflict to get to that point." The gap between the ambition of the language and the absence of concrete proposals is the defining feature of this moment. The first day of talks ended early Tuesday afternoon local time, with a second day set for Wednesday.