Kushner and Witkoff join US-Ukraine-Russia talks in Abu Dhabi

Talks between the United States, Ukraine and Russia kicked off Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, marking the first trilateral session since February. The two-day meeting centers on security guarantees, a demand Kyiv has carried for years. The war began in 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of his neighbor.

President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner said on X that he and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are putting in the work to find a negotiated settlement that delivers lasting peace and sets up conditions for a sovereign, secure and prosperous Ukraine inside a steadier European security environment. Kushner framed the session as an opening step that could build momentum toward more negotiations down the road. A future deal, he suggested, would hinge on a security arrangement involving European nations and Russia.

Putin's price for peace hasn't shifted. He wants Ukrainian troops pulled out of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — the four regions Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He has also demanded Ukraine drop its NATO bid, swallow strict limits on its military, and lift restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church.

Zelenskyy has refused to hand over territory Russia couldn't win on the battlefield, and he rejects caps on Ukraine's military or its deals with Western partners, which Kyiv treats as the core guarantee against another invasion. Ukraine's position is that an immediate ceasefire has to come first, and that only a face-to-face Putin-Zelenskyy meeting can settle borders.

This is the fourth round of trilateral talks this year, after sessions in January and February fizzled out once Trump launched a war on Iran. Since then, Witkoff and Kushner have shuttled between separate meetings with Putin and Zelenskyy. In October, first lady Melania Trump's office said she had secured a humanitarian ceasefire in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Oleshky, which held from Oct. 28 to Nov. 1.