Putin’s territorial demands and Ukraine’s ceasefire position remain far apart
Long-range attacks continued overnight as three-way talks opened Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The White House said the two-day session, the first since February, would focus on security guarantees. Russia sees NATO as a threat, while Ukraine wants to prevent future Russian invasions, and Washington renewed its push to end the war that followed Moscow’s all-out invasion nearly five years ago.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 162 drones of various types and a ballistic missile at Ukraine overnight. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its forces shot down 155 Ukrainian drones overnight above eight Russian regions and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The exchanges came during an intensified long-range air campaign. The ground battles have morphed into a war of attrition along a 1,200-kilometer (about 750-mile) front line, with both sides ramping up drone and missile strikes. Russia has intensified its air campaign against Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to weaken the country’s resolve as winter sets in. Moscow has relied on ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors, while Ukraine has escalated its drone strikes on Russian oil refineries.
A short ceasefire briefly brought normal life back to Ukraine’s Kherson region. More broadly, there are no signs the fighting is abating; the two armies are largely deadlocked on the front line, and the talks took place against a backdrop of new long-range strikes between Russia and Ukraine. Hopes of progress in ending Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II were tempered by the absence of significant breakthroughs in three previous rounds of talks early this year. Analysts and humanitarian organizations said the war has already killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of civilians.
Ukraine brought European and NATO representatives into the room before the three-way session opened. Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service who was leading Kyiv’s delegation, said the day began with a meeting between the Ukrainian team, the U.S. envoys and representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission. Russia objected to the Europeans’ involvement but said EU representatives could join at a later stage. Some in the EU see Washington’s proposals as too accommodating to Moscow.
Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on key elements of any prospective deal. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to pull its troops back from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the four regions Moscow annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He also demands that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO, accept strict limits on its military and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
Putin wants a comprehensive peace deal on those conditions and says he will not agree to a general halt in hostilities, arguing that it would only allow Ukrainian troops to rest and replenish their weapons stockpiles. He has warned that Russia will achieve its goals by force if Kyiv refuses to meet his conditions for peace.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Denmark on Tuesday, rejected Putin’s demand that Ukraine voluntarily cede territory Russia has not been able to take on the battlefield. Zelenskyy also rejected limits on Ukraine’s military or its arrangements with Western partners, which Kyiv sees as essential security guarantees against another invasion. Ukraine argues that an immediate ceasefire is the necessary first step toward negotiating a wider settlement and says a direct meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is the only way territorial issues can be settled.
Both delegations included senior officials who had attended previous rounds of talks. Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin aide who has led Moscow’s team since the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022, heads a delegation that also includes deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and Yuri Zhigarlovsky, deputy chief of the General Staff’s operational department. Apart from Umerov, the Ukrainian delegation reportedly includes Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, his deputy, Sergiy Kyslytsya, and Davyd Arakhamia, the parliamentary faction leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.
Medinsky said the Russian delegation “has become bigger and more professional.” He expressed hope that the meeting “will allow us to advance on the path towards peace in the interests of the people of Russia and the people of Ukraine.”
On X, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said he and fellow envoy Steve Witkoff were working on a “negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine within a more stable European security environment.” Melania Trump also touted an agreement she brokered between Russia and Ukraine.
Last week, Trump declared that some kind of grand deal about European security was in the works, describing it as “a big agreement” that is “going to involve more than Ukraine.” Kushner said Monday on X that a “comprehensive and lasting settlement will also require direct engagement between Russia and our European partners on the broader security arrangements that affect them.” He said the Abu Dhabi discussions would set the stage for “that engagement to begin in the near future, as part of a broader multilateral process.”
Moscow has praised the broad approach. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “We can only welcome the (U.S.) negotiators on President Donald Trump’s request proposing to put the issue of collective security on top of the agenda of the talks on a Ukrainian settlement.” Just before Moscow launched the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, it demanded that NATO roll back deployments in member countries in Central and Eastern Europe, viewing the alliance’s presence as a security threat. Similar demands are likely to be part of any comprehensive peace deal proposed by Russia.
Before the talks began, Kushner said he and Witkoff would meet separately with envoys from Ukraine, the European Union, NATO, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy to “continue the close consultation and coordination we have undertaken on European security and Ukraine’s postwar future over the past several weeks.”