Moscow and Kyiv are privately showing “a little bit of flexibility” over who would control Ukraine’s eastern regions in a postwar scenario, US officials have said, on the eve of fresh talks aimed at ending the war.
The comments came before the first trilateral talks since February. Senior officials from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington are due to meet in Abu Dhabi as the fifth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches. The talks come as Ukraine reels from a deadly Russian strike on a village in Zaporizhzhia last week, which killed at least 40 people.
Donetsk remains the central dispute between the sides
Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on how to end the conflict. A key point of disagreement involves Donetsk, a region that is now mostly occupied by Russia. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine give up the parts of Donetsk it still holds, while Kyiv wants to freeze the contact line to keep control of those areas, which it says are crucial to its future security.
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Neither side has shifted publicly on these demands. A US official speaking on the eve of the talks, however, suggested this was only the public stance and that Moscow and Kyiv had shown “a little bit of flexibility, privately”. The official acknowledged that the issue could not be settled without discussing a new “security architecture”.
“They will not solve the Donetsk issue and the territorial issue until they know what the security architecture is going to be after the war,” the official said. “And keep in mind, we’re not going to be able to finalise one without the other.”
Washington proposes a broader security framework and European role
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and part of the US delegation alongside peace envoy Steve Witkoff, said the talks would focus on addressing the “postwar security concerns” of both Russia and Ukraine. Writing on X, Kushner said an important part of the process was getting all parties to think seriously about what comes after the war.
Under a post-war security arrangement, Ukraine could seek assurances that its allies would come to its aid if it were attacked again. For Russia, such an arrangement could address its long-standing ambition to see Nato roll back from eastern Europe, a prospect that would alarm Europeans.
The proposed framework includes security consultations, crisis communication hotlines and “reciprocal de-escalation measures” between the two sides. The officials also floated reactivating the Nato-Russia Council, which has been largely paused since 2022.
European leaders, who have been largely excluded from the peace talks, have pushed to take part amid concern that decisions about their continent’s security could be made without them. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged on Monday that Nato allies and EU members be included in any “meaningful discussions about Europe’s security architecture”. President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said Kyiv wants Europe to be part of the talks.
The US official said Washington would propose moving into a multilateral format that brings the Europeans into the discussion. “Hopefully we’ll get the Russians on board,” the official said, while acknowledging that “the Russians have a bad taste in their mouth with the Europeans.”
Scepticism in Kyiv as strikes continue ahead of Abu Dhabi
The last round of trilateral talks, held in Geneva in February, ended without a breakthrough. Soon afterwards, the US-Israel war on Iran diverted Washington’s attention from Ukraine, and no further discussions were held.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has led several rounds of talks to end the conflict, with little success. His increasingly conciliatory approach towards Moscow has fuelled deep unease in Kyiv and across the European Union. After meeting Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Washington last week, Trump touted a forthcoming “big, beautiful agreement” on Ukraine that “might involve all of Europe”.
Many in Ukraine doubt such a deal would produce a fair peace. Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian MP who heads the foreign affairs parliamentary committee, said he believes Trump wants “a quick deal at the expense of Ukraine”, which he said Kyiv would certainly reject.
Merezhko argued that greater pressure on Russia through sanctions and deep strikes is the only way to push Vladimir Putin into real negotiations. “While Putin has a war machine up and running, he has no incentives to negotiate,” he said. He also pointed to Trump’s deal to buy diesel from Russia, which he said “only encourages Moscow to continue the war.”
Moscow’s delegation in Abu Dhabi will include:
- Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky
- Deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin
- Spy chief Igor Kostyukov
- Army general Yury Zhigarlovsky
Kyiv is sending several senior officials who have been part of previous negotiating teams, including Foreign Intelligence Service head Rustem Umerov, Zelensky’s chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov, and MP Davyd Arakhamiya.
Away from Abu Dhabi, Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with deadly bombardments and strikes on energy infrastructure. Kyiv views these attacks as proof that Moscow wants to corner Ukraine into accepting a deal on Russia’s terms.
On Monday, Kushner cautioned that the Abu Dhabi talks could at most “build momentum toward the next phase of negotiations.” He wrote on X that “this is an extraordinarily difficult and complicated conflict,” adding that the US was “approaching these discussions with determination and realism.”
