Delegations from the United States, Ukraine and Russia sat down in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday for the first trilateral peace talks since diplomacy over the war in Ukraine was derailed by President Trump's war with Iran in February, according to CBS News. The two-day session, mediated by senior U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, is aimed at ending a war that has raged since Russian President Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion.

Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, described the talks as an early step. He is "working hard to find a negotiated solution" that could deliver lasting peace, he wrote on X, adding that the session could "build momentum" toward a broader settlement — one he said would likely include security arrangements involving European countries and Russia.

This is the fourth round of trilateral negotiations this year and the first since January and February sessions in Abu Dhabi, before the three sides' diplomacy stalled amid the fighting between the U.S. and Iran. Since then, Witkoff and Kushner have held separate meetings with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Al Jazeera.

Still Far Apart on Territory

The core sticking point remains territory. Putin has demanded Ukraine withdraw entirely from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions — four regions Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 but has never fully captured on the battlefield. He is also pressing Kyiv to abandon its NATO bid, accept strict limits on its military, and lift restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church inside Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has rejected ceding territory Russia hasn't taken by force, and has also pushed back on any limits on Ukraine's military or its security arrangements with Western partners. Kyiv's position, per Bloomberg, is that an immediate ceasefire should come first, with only a direct Putin-Zelenskyy meeting able to resolve the territorial questions.

"WORKING HARD TO FIND A NEGOTIATED SOLUTION."

A U.S. official told Bloomberg that both Moscow and Kyiv have privately shown some flexibility on occupied territory, even as both governments remain publicly adamant in their positions. Russia has resisted formal European participation in the talks; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Abu Dhabi round would stay strictly trilateral, though Ukraine's negotiator, Rustem Umerov, met separately with European representatives alongside Witkoff and Kushner.

A War Still Raging

The talks opened as fighting continued on the ground. Ukrainian officials said strikes on the country's power grid in recent days left more than 600,000 people without electricity, and an attack on an aid distribution center may have killed as many as 70 people. Poland, meanwhile, launched a major security operation along its border with Russia this week.

A brief, limited precedent for de-escalation exists: in October, Melania Trump's office said it had secured a temporary humanitarian ceasefire for the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, which ran from October 28 to November 1.

Kushner has cast the Abu Dhabi talks as a foundation-laying exercise rather than a breakthrough moment, and no outcome had been announced as the two-day session got underway Tuesday. Both delegations are expected to continue meeting through Wednesday.