Russia and Ukraine begin their first direct peace talks since February today, Tuesday 10 November, in Abu Dhabi, hosted and mediated by the United States. The two-day session runs on 10 and 11 November, and the war is approaching its fifth year.
The United States delegation is led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the chief negotiator and son-in-law of President Donald Trump. Kushner posted online that Trump was determined to bring an end to the war and that the United States was working hard to find a negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace.
The Russian delegation is led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, and includes deputy foreign ministers Sergey Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin and military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov. The Ukrainian delegation is led by Rustem Umerov, the head of foreign intelligence.
European officials are also in Abu Dhabi, including British National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and two senior European Union envoys, for separate consultations with Ukraine and the United States. Russia opposes direct European involvement at the table itself.
What is on the agenda
The agenda covers the hardest questions of the war. Security guarantees come first: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants guarantees of the kind set out in NATO's Article 5, which would commit allies to treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on them.
Territory is the second question. Moscow wants Kyiv to pull back from the four regions it has annexed, while Kyiv wants the current contact line frozen where it stands. The gap between those two positions is wide, and it is the core of the dispute.
Ceasefire mechanisms and humanitarian issues are also on the table. A ceasefire needs agreed terms for monitoring and enforcement, and humanitarian questions include prisoners, civilians and the movement of people.
Why expectations are low
The last direct talks were held in Geneva in February and ended without a breakthrough. Since then, a localised truce around Oleshky last month was brokered with help from Melania Trump, but it covered only a small area and a short period.
Experts quoted in the report caution against expecting an immediate breakthrough. Alexander Lord of Sibylline and Layla Guest both described the Abu Dhabi session as more part of a slowly building peace process than a meeting that will settle the war.
Leaked reports suggest Russia has suffered more than 440,000 dead since 2022, a figure that shows the scale of the human cost behind the talks. The number comes from leaked reports and has not been officially confirmed.
What to watch over the next two days
The two-day format gives the delegations time to work through the agenda in stages, and the presence of European officials for separate consultations adds a second track to the talks. Whether the two sides move beyond their stated positions will become clear only as the sessions progress.
For now, the fact of the meeting matters. Direct talks have not happened since February, and the return to the table in Abu Dhabi, with the United States hosting, is the first step in a process that all sides describe as slow and difficult.
