‘No concession’: What to expect from Russia-US-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi

Officials from Ukraine, Russia and the United States are set to converge in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for negotiations aimed at ending nearly five years of war between Moscow and Kyiv.

But analysts are not hopeful of much progress in the trilateral talks slated for Tuesday and Wednesday amid US President Donald Trump’s recent engagement with the Kremlin.

Trump has blamed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for holding up peace efforts. “Zelenskyy has to want to settle this war, and if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” he said last month. The US also signed a deal last month to buy Russian diesel, which critics say would provide Russia with revenue to sustain the war against Ukraine.

On Thursday, Trump claimed that the war was close to being settled, and ending it might involve all of Europe. But Europe is not officially part of the trilateral talks. Last week, France said that Europe will send representatives to Abu Dhabi, as Ukraine’s Western allies fear Trump might force a deal that might undermine the continent’s security.

Russia occupies roughly 20 percent of Ukraine, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region. The Russian move has not been recognised by the international community, but Trump has urged Kyiv to cede territory for a deal to end the war that has killed thousands and displaced millions.

So what can we expect from the latest round of peace talks this year, as tit-for-tat attacks on energy sites have intensified in recent months? The two sides have held three rounds of US-mediated peace talks this year, including two in Abu Dhabi.

Who is attending the talks?

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be heading the US delegation for the first such talks in nine months, as the US president has pushed to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Ukraine’s primary negotiator and foreign intelligence chief Rustem Umerov will lead Kyiv’s negotiation team, the Kyiv Independent reported. The Ukrainian delegation will also include David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s parliamentary group; Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov; and Sergiy Kyslytsya, first deputy head of the Presidential Office.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, confirmed last week that the Russian delegation would be led by former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, the state news agency TASS reported. It also includes diplomat Mikhail Galuzin, spy chief Igor Kostyukov and army general Yuri Zhygarlovsky, the Kremlin said.

On Monday, the Kremlin said the peace talks would not include European officials. Peskov’s comments to reporters appeared to conflict with a statement on Sunday by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, who said officials from France, Britain, Germany, NATO and the European Commission would be present at the November 10-11 meeting.

An EU official told the AFP news agency on Monday that national security officials for the bloc, NATO, France, Germany and the United Kingdom would be on site – but it was unclear how they would be involved.

What is at stake in the Abu Dhabi talks?

“I don’t expect any tangible progress in the Abu Dhabi talks. The reason is simple and remains the same – Putin has absolutely no intention to negotiate seriously. He remains totally fixated on the [destruction] of Ukraine,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian member of parliament from the Servant of the People party, told Al Jazeera.

Putin wants Ukraine’s “surrender”, which will allow him to subjugate Ukrainians, he said.

Finnish-Russian political scientist Arkady Moshes says Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence are at stake in the upcoming talks.

Restoring Ukrainian territorial integrity, including Crimea, may already be beyond reach, said Moshes, a programme director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 – a move not recognised by the United Nations.

Moshes said that it would be very difficult for Ukraine to accept a peace agreement that doesn’t allow it “to choose its alliances, decide on its security future, or [that] put limits on its military”.

Ukraine wants Russia to withdraw from its territory and a security guarantee as part of any deal with Russia, but Russia has refused to end its occupation and set conditions that Kyiv should not be given membership of the NATO alliance. Moscow has also opposed the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine after a deal.

Matthew Boyse, a senior fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia specialising in Central Europe, agreed that the most difficult sticking points are those about territory and security guarantees for Ukraine.

“So far Putin has not budged from his ‘my way or the highway’ and ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable’ position,” Boyse, a former US diplomat, told Al Jazeera.

The analysts agreed that the future of European security as a whole is also at stake.

“The Kremlin agreed to and codified the post-1991 European security order in many agreements and treaties until Putin in the 2000s began to tear them up and in 2014 turned that order upside down,” said Boyse, referring to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

But the Kremlin has accused the US and its European allies of encircling Russia militarily. To that end, Russia has opposed the expansion of NATO in Europe, which it sees as a security threat. Russia has warned of a direct military standoff with Europe if NATO expands its military footprint eastward closer to the Russian border.

Anders Olofsgard, deputy director at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, said it was reassuring that Kushner had explicitly stated that “NATO would remain central to European collective defence and that no country should have a veto over another country’s security or alliance choices”.

Another element at stake is the future of post-Soviet states in Europe, namely Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, said Moshes, the political scientist.

“If Ukraine now capitulates despite its serious efforts and despite the support from the West, from Europe, that means that several other post-Soviet states will definitely be under threat,” he said, adding that Russia could pursue a “tough Soviet-like sphere of influence or even direct annexation” of these countries.

When was the last time a breakthrough appeared likely?

No talks have yet come close to a breakthrough.

Only perhaps at the end of March 2022, at the very start of the conflict, when the two countries met in Istanbul, there was some possibility of ending the conflict, said Olofsgard.

“At this point, the relative strengths of the two counterparts were not clear; Ukraine had proven stronger and Russia more incompetent than expected,” he said.

Ukraine was also more willing to make concessions with respect to joining NATO, not allowing foreign bases in Ukraine, and not demanding the immediate return of Crimea, Olofsgard added.

Ultimately, however, there were many factors contributing to the meeting’s failure in the end, “including the atrocities in Bucha, [a] lack of clear Western promises of security guarantees, Russian failures on the battlefield changing the calculations of both sides, and incompatible views on land concessions and military build-up of Ukraine”, he said.

Analysts talk about a guarantor to secure peace. They point out the example of American troops stationed in South Korea to this day following the 1953 Korean War armistice.

Ukraine would “probably need something like that”, Moshes said, adding that “no Western country has been seriously speaking about guaranteeing whatever the outcome of the negotiations might be”.

Why have repeated attempts to negotiate an end to this war failed?

Vast differences remain between the two sides.

While past meetings have facilitated important results, from prisoner exchanges to the return of kidnapped Ukrainian children from Russia, they have failed to address core differences, said Boyse, referring to territorial concessions and a security guarantee for Ukraine.

Ultimately, Russia wants to win the war – it wants a military victory over a diplomatic one, said Moshes.

“Russia is interested in continuing the war until Ukraine is defeated,” he said, adding that “Ukraine cannot accept capitulation after so many years of resistance [and] so much economic trouble”.

Boyse, the former US diplomat, said that Putin’s grand vision of reestablishing the Russian empire was the key obstacle.

“Putin has a colonial attitude towards Ukraine. He wants to control it or at a minimum, decide what goes on there,” said Boyse, adding that this was understandably unacceptable to Ukraine.

 

What would it take for these talks to produce a meaningful breakthrough?

Olexiy Haran, a Ukrainian professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, said some technical issues could be negotiated in Abu Dhabi this week, including grain supplies, a ceasefire in the Black Sea, an energy ceasefire and perhaps another exchange of prisoners.

But all the analysts were certain no peace accord would emerge from the talks.

“The White House has hinted at what appears to be some sort of a grand bargain that appears to expand the number of issues under negotiation to the European security order,” said Boyse.

But this assurance appears to focus primarily on meeting Russia’s demands, not Ukraine’s, he said.

“Russia is the demandeur and the aggressor and is pressing a weakened president who very much wants to be a peacemaker,” said the former US diplomat.

“Putin thinks he can win at the negotiation table what he cannot win on the battlefield.”

Olofsgard of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics said that Trump, who has become a lame-duck following his party’s losses in the midterm elections, may pay more attention to foreign policy during his remaining two years in power.

“This could imply that Trump will push even harder to make peace, or at least a ceasefire, in Ukraine. And given his past tendencies, that means leaning on Ukraine to make more concessions and trying to strike some kind of US business deals as a sweetener for Russia,” he said.

Analysts doubt a breakthrough would be achieved in the Abu Dhabi talks as the Russian leader would not offer major concessions.

“Putin’s way of negotiating is generally: demand the maximum, escalate, and wait until others compromise,” said Boyse.