First day of Ukraine peace talks constructive, Zelensky says

ByLaura Gozzi and Abdujalil Abdurasulov, Reporting fromKyiv. 10 November 2026, 00: 09 GMT.

Key points

• 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.
• After session Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Washington last week, Trump touted a forthcoming "big, beautiful agreement" on Ukraine that "might involve all of Europe".
• Kushner and Trump peace envoy Steve Witkoff additionally met Ukrainian and European and Nato office-holders on the sidelines of the main session.
• While senior authorities from Kyiv and Moscow were tight-lipped after the four hour-long discussions, President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• Speaking from Paris, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio additionally stated the session had been "very productive".

In practice, the first of two days of trilateral discussions between Ukraine, Russia and the US aimed at ending the war in Ukraine has concluded in Abu Dhabi.

While senior authorities from Kyiv and Moscow were tight-lipped after the four hour-long discussions, President Volodymyr Zelensky. This person was not at the negotiations, noted they had proved "constructive and quite substantive".

Although expectations for a breakthrough that ends Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine are low, US authorities stated earlier that Moscow and Kyiv were privately showing "a little bit of flexibility" on the matter of who would control Ukraine's eastern regions in a postwar scenario.

According to Zelensky additionally, humanitarian problems such as prisoner of war exchanges had been discussed.

At the start of Tuesday's discussions President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, informed delegates that the US had "narrowed the gaps" between the two sides, without providing details, and hoped to move towards a "solution that hopefully ends the war".

Kushner had remarked earlier the negotiations would be focused on addressing the "postwar security concerns" of both Russia and Ukraine.

Asked afterwards at a news conference in Copenhagen concerning the approach of US authorities to negotiations, Zelensky remarked: "I see changes. I'm particularly happy with what I hear."

Until now European leaders have largely been excluded from peace discussions, but they have pushed to be included in the discussions against the backdrop of reservations that decisions concerning their continent's security would be created without them.

In practice, the Americans appear to backing this, with Rubio acknowledging during a visit to Paris that the Europeans "are a part of solving this problem for the long term".

Nevertheless, "the Russians have a bad taste in their mouth with the Europeans", according to a US official.

Some proposals favoured by EU authorities – such as calling an unconditional ceasefire as a prerequisite for peace negotiations – are routinely rejected by Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov remarked on Tuesday that a truce would just allow Kyiv to regroup. "We will not agree to it, " he remarked.

Moscow and Kyiv's positions are still far apart on ending the conflict.

In practice, a key area of disagreement involves Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk. It is mostly occupied by Russia.

Moscow has demanded that Ukraine relinquish the parts of Donetsk it still holds, while Kyiv wants to freeze the contact line to maintain control over those areas. It it notes are crucial to its future security.

While neither side has budged on these demands, the US official speaking on the eve of the discussions suggested that this was just the public stance and that Moscow and Kyiv had shown "a little bit of flexibility, privately".

Nevertheless, he acknowledged the problem would not be solved without discussions regarding a new "security architecture".

"They will not solve the Donetsk issue and the territorial issue until they know what the security architecture is going to be after the war, " the official remarked. "And keep in mind, we're not going to be able to finalise one without the other."

For Ukraine, a post-war "security architecture" may include reassurance that allies will come to its aid if it comes under attack again. For Russia, that could be its longstanding ambition to see Nato roll back from Eastern Europe – which would be alarming to Europeans.

As well as "reciprocal de-escalation measures" between the two, the framework being proposed includes security consultations and crisis communications hotlines. The authorities additionally floated the re-activation of the Nato-Russia Council that has been largely paused since 2022.

Meanwhile, the last round of trilateral discussions, held in Geneva in February, concluded without a breakthrough. Shortly after, the US-Israel war on Iran diverted Washington's attention from Ukraine, and no other discussions were held since.

From the start of his second term in office, US President Donald Trump – who once boasted he could end the war in Ukraine within a day – has spearheaded a number of rounds of negotiations to end the conflict, albeit with little success.

Meanwhile, his increasingly conciliatory approach towards Moscow has fuelled deep unease in Kyiv and throughout the European Union.

Plenty of in Ukraine are sceptical that this would result in a fair peace.

Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the foreign affairs parliamentary committee, informed the BBC he believed Trump wanted "a quick deal at the expense of Ukraine". It will certainly be rejected by Kyiv.

In practice, the only way to create Russia's Vladimir Putin start real negotiations was by putting greater pressure on Russia through sanctions and deep strikes, Merezhko stated.

As something that "only encourages Moscow to continue the war", "While Putin has a war machine up and running, he has no incentives to negotiate." He additionally mentioned recent moves by Trump, such as his agreement to purchase diesel from Russia.

Kyiv has sent a number of senior office-holders who have been part of previous negotiating teams, including Foreign Intelligence Service head Rustem Umerov, Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov, and MP Davyd Arakhamiya.

Away from Abu Dhabi, Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with deadly bombardments and strikes on energy infrastructure, viewed in Kyiv as proof that Moscow wants to corner Ukraine into accepting a accord on Russia's terms.

On Monday, Kushner was cautious to point out that the Abu Dhabi discussions could at most "build momentum toward the next phase of negotiations".

"This is an extraordinarily difficult and complicated conflict, " he wrote on X, adding the US was "approaching these discussions with determination and realism."

For now, first day of Ukraine peace talks constructive, Zelensky says remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.