Washington Pushes for Final Resolution to Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Abu Dhabi Negotiations Open

U.S. officials said they would pursue a “final end” to the war between Russia and Ukraine, opening with trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday in the first substantive negotiations between the two countries since February.

The talks are also the first since the United States launched joint strikes with Israel against Iran, and they follow challenging midterm elections that have weakened Donald Trump’s position at home.

Part of the Trump administration’s proposal involves drawing a new “long-term security architecture” between Russia and Europe, administration officials have said.

European officials are concerned that Russia may adhere to hardline demands that NATO roll back its military footprint across eastern Europe, which could leave allies vulnerable to Moscow’s influence at a time of historic tensions with the West.

Throughout his first decade in power, Vladimir Putin has complained about NATO’s eastward expansion and sought to renegotiate the balance of power between NATO and Russia—but never before have those demands been embraced by a sitting U.S. administration, which has made clear that it is eager to reach a deal.

Previewing the discussions, a U.S. administration official said the United States would “need Europe at the table” to end the war. He said negotiators could also revive the NATO-Russia Council, suspended after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and potentially lift sanctions against Russia to secure a deal.

U.S. officials also claimed they had discussed with Russia potential security guarantees for Ukraine similar to NATO’s Article 5, which protects member states in case of an attack. Russia has strongly opposed NATO admitting Ukraine or Western countries placing troops in Ukraine.

“What they would be getting would be effectively very similar to NATO,” an administration official said.

“Getting a U.S. security guarantee is a really, really big deal,” the official added, saying it would be up to Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss. “And if he wants to do that, that’s a very, very big deal in terms of resources and funding and military support.”

Critics have expressed skepticism about what might trigger those security guarantees, however, noting that Article 5 does not strictly obligate NATO member states to defend others, and that cyber-attacks and other forms of hybrid warfare have blurred the line for what would require a military response.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a lead U.S. negotiator, described a potential new framework for Europe in general terms on Monday, saying the U.S. would seek “stronger consultation, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency, and reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks, while fully respecting the sovereignty and independent decision-making of every nation.”

European delegations from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the European Union will meet U.S. negotiators in Abu Dhabi to discuss the “long-term security architecture between Russia and Europe in order to figure out how to reduce future conflicts.”

A European security official from a country attending the talks said the U.S. proposal was not yet clear and that they were bracing themselves for the U.S. to offer serious concessions to Russia during the Abu Dhabi consultations.

“We already have a European security architecture in place,” said Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, at a G7 foreign ministers meeting on Monday. “This includes international agreements under which Russia has undertaken obligations, including with regard to sovereignty and territorial integrity. The problem is that Russia is not respecting these agreements.”

Donald Trump has also said that Ukraine would likely be expected to give up territory in a final deal, and that it would end with a “little bit different shape.”

Trump said last week, after meeting with Kremlin advisor Kirill Dmitriev, that he would seek a “big, beautiful agreement” that “might involve all of Europe.” Critics are concerned that Trump and Putin could try to bypass European leaders to negotiate a peace that grants serious concessions to Russia.

“There’s a lot of baggage that people in Europe have about this idea,” said a U.S. administration official, pointing specifically to Russia’s 2021 proposal that was viewed as an ultimatum to NATO to get out of eastern Europe.

In 2021, Russia issued a list of demands to NATO that included a ban on expansion to new countries including Ukraine, a rollback of troops to its pre-1997 borders, and limits on where it could place missiles. NATO rejected that proposal, and Russia invaded Ukraine less than a month later.

“We have to build something new that works today… Because if all the old architecture was working well, then we wouldn’t be in this long war. And so obviously something’s not working, and we need to come up with a way that when we end this war, it really is a final end to the war,” said the U.S. administration official.

The content of those proposals is not yet clear, although Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on Monday “there’s been some advances made in what that architecture should look like.”

“We obviously have to get past the conflict to get to that point,” he added.

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