Ukrainians and Russians today concluded two days of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the first in nine months, with the announcement of an exchange of prisoners as a more tangible result and without European allies at the table.
© Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP via Getty Images
11/11/2026
by
Lusa
Ucranians and Russians today concluded two days of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the first in nine months, with the announcement of an exchange of prisoners as a more tangible result and without European allies at the table.
The absence of Europeans from US-mediated negotiations was, moreover, the reason for a joking comment by the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, who said they were “there” in a Abu Dhabi hotel.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said today “not understanding very well” the role of Europeans, saying that Moscow received no concrete proposal, “so it is quite complicated to know what to discuss”.
Russia has made the negotiations on the war that started against Ukraine almost five years ago dependent on the definition of a new security architecture in Europe, an idea that has been receiving the support of American President Donald Trump.
“The world needs a new security system”, as the current “works very badly,” Medinsky justified at the end of the talks.
In Copenhagen, where he spoke to Parliament today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on Europeans' participation in the negotiations for now limited to Kiev, Moscow and Washington.
“ When decisions are being made about what the next decades will be like in our part of the world, in the talks between the United States and Russia, Europe must be at the table. That is Ukraine’s firm position,” he said.
Representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and the European Commission were in Abu Dhabi, as well as NATO, for meetings with the Ukrainian delegation, in a kind of technical and diplomatic advice.
The Abu Dhabi talks took place after a tripartite round also held on 17 and 18 February in Geneva.
Shortly thereafter, the United States and Israel attacked Iran, starting a widespread conflict in the Middle East, and the “old” war in Ukraine has gone to the background.
Russia has used this less media attention to keep Ukraine under fire, in a strategy aimed at civilians and energy infrastructure, especially with the approaching cold weather.
Kiev has responded with increasingly sophisticated drone attacks with greater scope against the Russian oil industry, but war in the Middle East has increased the scarcity of defense systems, making Ukraine more vulnerable.
From two days of meetings in Abu Dhabi came the announcement of “a large number of prisoners,” as Medinsky called it, described by American emissary Jared Kushner as the “greatest humanitarian release of prisoners,” but whose details remained undisclosed.
The final decision on the number of prisoners of war to be exchanged can be made in the contacts that Kushner and the other American special envoy Steve Witkoff will keep with the Russian and Ukrainian presidents.
Trump's envoys go to Moscow to speak with Vladimir Putin on Thursday, which follows a meeting with Zelensky in Dublin on the margins of the European Political Community summit, created after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Zelensky today insisted that the first step in achieving a lasting peace agreement is to end the war and to bring about post-conflict security guarantees for Ukraine.
This contrasts with that of Russia, which is only willing to stop hostilities if its demands for a new security architecture in Europe are met, which eliminates alleged threats to Moscow.
One of the members of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, admitted the possibility of reaching a solution to the conflict by the end of the year, but the head of the negotiators held back the enthusiasm.
“ During these two days, the parties were able to expose their positions directly, and there are significant differences,” Rustem Umerov said.
He added, however, as the Russian counterpart had done, that there are “possibility of continuing the negotiation process”.
While we are talking about the end of the war, the peoples of both countries continue to live under the terror of missiles and drones, because the fighting has not stopped and have more cruelly hit Ukrainian civilians.