Before the teams from Ukraine and Russia met, preparatory talks took place in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday morning involving European powers, Ukraine and the U.S. team. Two officials familiar with these discussions, granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters, said these first talks were substantial and the mood was positive.
The topic of Europe’s future security architecture is acutely sensitive for European governments, who fear that President Donald Trump may be preparing to radically reduce U.S. support for security in their region, after years of bashing NATO allies.
Russia has been demanding a say over scaling back NATO’s efforts in Europe and has repeatedly insisted Ukraine should never join the alliance, something Kyiv and its closest allies have traditionally supported.
One critical question is sequencing. Will a deal on wider European security be part of a final Ukraine peace agreement or will it come later? Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and some of his strongest supporters have said in the past that there is no place for Russia to demand a wider European-NATO settlement as a condition for ending the war.
The Abu Dhabi talks mark the first time in nine months that negotiators from Ukraine and Russia have met with representatives from the U.S. for trilateral negotiations on peace. Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Witkoff are leading for the American side and pushing hard to expand the scope of the discussion to include Europe’s future security, and to get Europe a seat at the table.
Since Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has publicly and privately criticized Europeans for not doing enough to take responsibility for their own defenses. Under American pressure, NATO allies agreed new targets to increase their spending on security and defense to 5% of GDP by 2035.