Eyes on Abu Dhabi (and Russian drones)

Rukrainian and Russian presenters will resume direct dialogue on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, with American mediation, under a wave of pessimism about the end of the war initiated by Moscow in February 2022.

“I expect nothing from the negotiations,” summarized Inna Kolbasova, 50, whose son recently returned from Russian captivity, in statements to the Spanish agency EFE.

Expectations for the two-day meeting in the capital of the United Arab Emirates are few, as the parties have remained practically irreducible in the demands, especially territorial ones.

Kyiv wants to return to the original borders, which implies returning the Crimea annexed by Moscow in 2014, while Russia wants to maintain all the territory it claims to have conquered.

The resolution of the war ordered almost five years ago by Russian leader Vladimir Putin is not just about territorial sovereignty and meetings in Abu Dhabi take place at a particular moment.

On the one hand, Donald Trump has just suffered a thunderous defeat in the mid-term elections on November 3.

And if the foreign policy of the American leader was already erratic, new doubts arise as to what can be expected of a politically wounded Trump, who has been more condescending to Putin than Ukrainian supporter.

On the other hand, and also as a result of the US mid-terms, Europe has been more assertive in demanding a role in finding a solution to war, despite the known difficulties of consensus in the European Union (EU).

Europeans have repeated in recent days that it is they who make decisions on the security of Europe, especially after Trump announced “a great deal” about Ukraine and the continent itself.

But as some question, who speaks on behalf of Europeans?

“ As we can see, they [Europeans] cannot even decide who can dialogue [with Moscow] on their behalf,” said Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman.

The criticisms are not only from Moscow: the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, demanded that the EU clarify who speaks on its behalf to stop giving the image of “people totally without credibility”.

Trump has also complained that he does not know who to call in the EU and is even talking about a “war of competences” in Brussels, as well as initiatives by Member States that deserve criticism from other Member States.

Peskov has today insisted that the dialogue is three and has forwarded any contacts with Europeans to channels owned by the United States and Ukraine, after France and the EU have announced that Europe will be in Abu Dhabi.

What is expected is that Ukraine’s main European partners will be present as a sort of Ukrainian security advisor, although there is no confirmation that they will participate directly in the contacts.

On the Ukraine side, the authorities have already warned that no rapid results should be expected from the negotiations between the delegations headed by the head of the Ukrainian secret services, Rustem Umerov, and Vladimir Medinski, adviser to Putin.

The best result may be an agreement for further prisoner-of-war exchanges or a limited local truce, similar to that recently observed in the occupied Ukrainian village of Oleshky in Kherson.

For Kyiv, a post-war solution must go through security guarantees if Russia attacks the country again, as it did in 2014, when it annexed Crimea, and repeated in 2022, on a larger scale.

“What matters is that it is clear on paper [...]: if Russia starts [attacking] again, what will happen? Who will do what, with what means and when ", summed up Zelensky.

The issue of Zelensky, even if centered in Ukraine, is related to the so-called European security architecture, which many consider to have been called into question by the Russian invasion of 2022.

Until then, NATO had ensured the defence of Europe on the assumption of a relatively predictable Russia linked to the European economy.

Moscow has insisted on a new reality and among some Europeans there is talk of an army of Europe in the face of Trump's unpredictability, but the defeat in the U.S. intermediates can change the data.

“ It is completely clear: Europe does not need a new security architecture, as Russia wants us to believe, but simply the restoration of existing security architecture,” the head of German diplomacy said today.

As constituents of this order, Johann Wadephul quoted the Helsinki Agreements, the Paris Charter and the Budapest Memorandum.

“ They all aim to secure all the borders and sovereign equality of all states,” he summed up, reaffirming that Europe must be part of the solution to the war in Ukraine.

While politics are being done in Abu Dhabi, in Ukraine, attention is being paid to Russian drones and missiles.

“ My whole life is about surviving. There's very little electricity and heating. Ballistic missiles and constant aerial alerts demoralize,” Inna Kolbasova described.