US Officials Say Ukraine Peace Talks Resume With ‘Some Flexibility’ by Warring Sides

Trilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia and the US aimed at ending the war in Ukraine have begun in Abu Dhabi.
Although expectations for a breakthrough that ends Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine are low, US officials said yesterday that Moscow and Kyiv were privately showing “a little bit of flexibility” on the issue of who would control Ukraine’s eastern regions in a postwar scenario.
Jared Kushner – Donald Trump’s son-in-law and part of the US delegation alongside peace envoy Steve Witkoff – said the talks would be focused on addressing the “postwar security concerns” of both Russia and Ukraine.
“An important part of this process is encouraging all parties to begin thinking seriously about what comes after the war,” Kushner wrote on X.
Ahead of the meeting, the two US envoys met Ukrainian and European and Nato officials in Abu Dhabi, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot was adamant that France, the UK and Germany “will indeed be in the meeting room”.
European officials are wary of Russia trying to secure a deal with the US on future “collective security” without them, and Moscow and Kyiv’s positions on ending the conflict are still far apart.
A key area of disagreement between the two involves Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk, which is by now mostly occupied by Russia.
Moscow has demanded that Ukraine relinquish the parts of Donetsk which it still holds, while Kyiv wants to freeze the contact line to maintain control over those sections, which it says are crucial to its future security.
While neither side has budged on these demands, the US official speaking on the eve of the talks suggested that this was just the public stance and that Moscow and Kyiv had shown “a little bit of flexibility, privately”.
However, he acknowledged that the issue would not be solved without discussions about 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.”
For Ukraine, a post-war “security architecture” may include reassurance that allies will come to its aid if it’s attacked again. For Russia, that could be its longstanding ambition to see Nato roll back from eastern Europe – which would be alarming to Europeans.
The framework being proposed includes security consultations and crisis communications hotlines, as well as “reciprocal de-escalation measures” between the two. The officials also floated the re-activation of the Nato-Russia Council that has been largely paused since 2022.