Preparations for a November 10 Three-Way Meeting in Abu Dhabi: Ukraine Peace Diplomacy Picks Up, but Many Obstacles Remain

With another bitter winter of fighting ahead in the Russia-Ukraine war, diplomatic activity is ramping back up in a fresh attempt to close in on a ceasefire and eventually a final peace accord. Under renewed pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Kyiv and Moscow are preparing to send negotiating teams to Abu Dhabi for a three-way meeting with American officials; the meeting is penciled in for November 10.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the agenda for Abu Dhabi should first include initial steps toward de-escalation, such as prisoner swaps and ceasefires on energy infrastructure and for the Black Sea. There should also be a discussion among the technical negotiating teams of what format a future three-way meeting between leaders — Trump, Zelenskyy and Russia's Vladimir Putin — should take, he told reporters this week.

When it comes to a final deal, one overriding question for Ukraine is what form of security guarantees it will get from Europe and the U.S., or potentially NATO. Zelenskyy will not want to accept anything he believes could leave Ukraine vulnerable to a future attack from Russia.

Putin is also likely to raise the need for security guarantees — for Russia — including limiting or potentially reversing NATO's presence in the neighborhood.

Then there is the question of territory. Zelenskyy's view is that marking out any boundaries, temporarily or permanently, is something that can only be discussed at leader level. 'No one else has the authority to do so,' he said this week.

Zelenskyy said that during previous sets of negotiations over the past year, 'as a compromise,' Ukraine had been prepared to discuss the idea of a demilitarized 'buffer zone' on both sides of the contact line in the Donbas region. Similar ideas were proposed for other parts of Ukraine, and his negotiators discussed these questions again with the Americans in recent weeks. 'We are ready to discuss the issue of territories because the Russians keep wanting to discuss it and make it part of the agenda,' he said — but that would need to be at a leader-level meeting.

European leaders are adamant that they must be included in final negotiations, not least because it is they who are now providing the vast bulk of financial and military support to Ukraine. Trump ended American aid in 2025.

Zelenskyy and U.S. officials accept that European governments will likely need to be involved in discussions about security guarantees — mainly because any peacekeeping forces deployed to Ukraine would be dominated by European troops. The Coalition of the Willing, a loose alliance of more than 30 countries led by France, the U.K. and Germany, put together detailed proposals in coordination with the U.S. almost a year ago. Ukraine is also interested in exploring bilateral security guarantees with the U.S., a discussion that would not need to involve European officials.

Plans for rebuilding Ukraine and nurturing its economic revival would also have to involve Europe, Zelenskyy said: 'We cannot envision such a, so to speak, ‘Marshall Plan’ without Europe.'

But there is no clarity on who should represent Europe. With no clarity emerging from Brussels, some leaders have taken matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a 90-minute call with Putin, urging him to end the war. It went down badly with several European governments, including Denmark, Italy, Sweden and Lithuania. Russia has said the call achieved nothing of substance and the war will likely 'escalate.'

One critical unknown is how long Trump's attention will stay on Ukraine. After the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran in the spring, progress on Ukraine stalled for months, only to return this fall as Trump sought to mitigate the impact of the Middle East conflict. A new escalation in the Iran war, Zelenskyy worries, could derail the negotiations all over again.

U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Zelenskyy, Stubb and Støre in Oslo on October 20, then went to St. Petersburg to meet Putin the next day. A follow-up meeting in Brussels this week, in preparation for the Abu Dhabi negotiations, was postponed by the Americans.