Abu Dhabi Trilateral Talks Open With Security Guarantees at Center, Europe Locked Out at Russia's Insistence

First substantive US-Ukraine-Russia talks since February begin with Witkoff and Kushner leading. Europe excluded from the table but briefed on the side — a structural concession to Moscow before negotiations even start.

The first substantive trilateral talks between the US, Ukraine, and Russia since February opened in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — Donald Trump's son-in-law and a property developer with no prior diplomatic portfolio — leading the American delegation. The two-day session marks the most serious diplomatic push to end a war now past four and a half years.

Security guarantees for Ukraine sit at the center of the agenda. A US official said the discussions would include the potential for Kyiv to receive a NATO-style Article 5 defence commitment. Territory — the issue both sides have refused to budge on — would come last, only after a postwar security architecture is agreed. Ukraine demands restoration of its original borders; Russia demands all of the Donbas. Trump told reporters the US was seeing a "very strong inclination" toward ending the war and that Ukraine would likely end with a "little bit different shape." The architecture of the talks themselves tells a story. European officials — from France, Germany, and the European Commission — are not at the negotiating table. Russia insisted on their exclusion, and the US agreed. Instead, Ukraine's delegation, led by foreign intelligence chief Rustem Umerov, will brief European allies separately on progress. This sidebar arrangement gives Moscow a structural win before substance is even discussed: the parties most likely to insist on territorial integrity and enforcement mechanisms are reduced to spectators. Witkoff posted on X that a pre-talks meeting with European and Ukrainian officials helped "coordinate efforts" and that all parties shared a commitment to "Euro-Atlantic security" and "robust security guarantees" for Kyiv. The language — sovereignty, territorial integrity, independent decision-making — reads like a deliberate counterweight to concerns that Washington might cut a deal over European heads. But language and leverage are different things, and the leverage belongs to whoever is in the room. The shadow of Russia's 2021 demands hangs over proceedings. That year, Moscow issued what NATO viewed as an ultimatum: ban alliance expansion including Ukraine, roll back troops to pre-1997 borders, restrict missile placements. NATO rejected it; Russia invaded less than a month later. A US administration official acknowledged the "baggage" and argued the old architecture failed. "We have to build something new that works today," the official said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on Monday that "some advances" had been made on what that architecture should look like, without specifying. Zelenskyy, for his part, framed Ukrainian battlefield performance as negotiating capital. "Every task that is fully accomplished — every defensive operation that increases Ukraine's strength and delivers results — strengthens us in negotiations," he said in a Monday night address. Umerov listed Kyiv's priorities: ending fighting, reliable security guarantees, economic recovery, and humanitarian steps. The core tension is structural. The US is acting simultaneously as mediator and as a party with its own interests in rapid resolution. Europe, which bears the greatest long-term security and economic consequences of whatever deal emerges, has no seat. And the question of who enforces any agreement — the hardest question in any ceasefire — remains entirely unanswered.