US says Kyiv and Moscow quietly flexible on Ukraine's east as talks resume

The first three-way peace talks since February opened in Abu Dhabi on Monday, with senior officials from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington sitting down as the fifth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion approaches. US officials say the two warring sides are privately showing "a little bit of flexibility" over who would control Ukraine's eastern regions once the fighting stops. The previous round, held in Geneva in February, ended with no breakthrough.

Donetsk is the wall both sides keep hitting. Moscow has demanded Ukraine hand over the chunks of the region it still holds; Kyiv wants the contact line frozen so it keeps them, arguing those areas are vital to its future security. A US official said neither the Donetsk question nor the wider territorial dispute can be settled until the parties know what the postwar security architecture looks like — and that one cannot be finalised without the other.

The framework on the table includes security consultations, crisis communication hotlines and "reciprocal de-escalation measures" between the two sides. Officials also floated reviving the Nato-Russia Council, largely frozen since 2022. Jared Kushner, in the US delegation alongside envoy Steve Witkoff, wrote on X that an important part of the process is getting all parties to think seriously about what comes after the war — while cautioning the talks could at most "build momentum toward the next phase of negotiations" and calling the conflict "extraordinarily difficult and complicated."

Europe is still on the outside, and it is pushing hard to get in. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged on Monday that Nato allies and EU members be included in any "meaningful discussions about Europe's security architecture," a demand Volodymyr Zelensky has repeated. The US official said Washington will propose moving to a multilateral format that brings the Europeans in — "Hopefully we'll get the Russians on board" — while conceding "the Russians have a bad taste in their mouth with the Europeans."

In Kyiv, the mood is sour. Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko, who heads the foreign affairs parliamentary committee, told the BBC he believes Donald Trump wants "a quick deal at the expense of Ukraine," which he says Kyiv will reject outright. The only way to force Putin into real negotiations, Merezhko argued, is heavier sanctions and deep strikes: "While Putin has a war machine up and running, he has no incentives to negotiate." He pointed to Trump's recent deal to buy diesel from Russia as something that "only encourages Moscow to continue the war." Trump met Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Washington last week and touted a coming "big, beautiful agreement" on Ukraine that "might involve all of Europe."

Moscow's delegation in Abu Dhabi includes Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, spy chief Igor Kostyukov and army general Yury Zhigarlovsky. Kyiv sent Foreign Intelligence Service head Rustem Umerov, Zelensky's chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov and MP Davyd Arakhamiya — all veterans of earlier negotiating teams. Away from the table, Russia kept pounding Ukraine with deadly bombardments and strikes on energy infrastructure, which Kyiv reads as an attempt to corner it into a deal on Russia's terms. The February round was followed by the US-Israel war on Iran, which pulled Washington's attention away and left no talks until now.