Ukraine Peace Talks Resume This Week in Abu Dhabi

Direct three-way talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine resume in Abu Dhabi on November 10 after a nine-month hiatus, The New Yorker reported. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said the meeting would cover “post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian efforts, and next steps toward peace.” The talks involve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on the U.S. side, alongside Russian and Ukrainian envoys.

The New Yorker reported that Trump wants to end the war quickly as a demonstration of his peacemaking powers and to unlock what he imagines as a fruitful and profitable relationship with Russia. Trump has said Russia, with its larger economy, population, and Army, is destined to prevail, stating “At some point, size will win.” He also said in September that an end to the war “It’d be great for business,” adding “Russia’s got great land, very valuable land.”

Witkoff and Kushner have projected transactional motives onto Putin, with Witkoff last month calling Putin a “humanitarian.” A European intelligence official told The New Yorker that Witkoff and Kushner “seem to have the idea that you can essentially buy him off,” adding “If you can just figure out a way to pay him enough, make it worth his while, whether with land or money, then you can get him to agree to a deal.”

The New Yorker reported that Putin is guided by a sense of historical mission and wants to determine Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation and have a say over security in Europe, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Putin’s aims include lifting Western sanctions and capturing the whole of the Donbas, though Russia’s military has been unable to fulfill that objective after nearly five years of fighting.

The Kremlin initially hoped Trump could deliver a grand geopolitical bargain bending both Kyiv and Europe, but Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign-policy adviser, said after Trump and Putin met in Alaska in August 2025 that it looked as if “the U.S. administration might be able to dictate something and force Kyiv to comply,” though “This hasn’t really worked out.”

Trump’s previous pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, including an Oval Office blowup in February, led European countries to take the lead in backstopping Ukraine’s defense. Balázs Jarábik, a former European diplomat, said “After that meeting, a new model emerged,” with Europeans providing the money. The E.U. has committed ninety billion euros in loans, while U.S. aid has fallen to several hundred million dollars, a fraction of earlier levels.

In recent weeks, Trump began offering Moscow incentives before a peace settlement is reached. On October 9, Trump announced a diesel deal with Putin under which Russia would release hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel into American and global markets while the U.S. temporarily lifted sanctions restrictions on Russian energy exports. Sergey Vakulenko, an energy analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said “It won’t bring that much diesel to the U.S. market nor all that much money to the Russian budget.”

For ten days in October, Ukraine faced unexplained speed limitations on drones using Starshield, a military application of SpaceX’s Starlink technology. The de-facto speed cap of a hundred miles per hour meant Ukraine’s jet-powered interceptor drones could not catch Russia’s Geran family drones, which fly at speeds of more than three hundred miles per hour. The restrictions also hampered Ukraine’s middle-strike drone operations targeting Russia’s military logistical rear. A political source in Kyiv said “The worst thing was that there were absolutely no official explanations—nothing, zero.” The restrictions were lifted by the end of October.