Ukraine and its partners opened two days of talks in Brussels on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, to work on security guarantees for Kyiv and a plan for the country’s postwar reconstruction, days before Ukrainian, American and Russian negotiators are due to meet in Abu Dhabi. The Brussels meetings, hosted by the European Commission, bring together representatives of Ukraine, the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, NATO and the World Bank, and are designed to align the Western allies on what a lasting settlement should contain before Kyiv faces Moscow across the table. No outcome from the Brussels sessions had been announced at the time of writing, and this article reports what was scheduled, what officials said the agenda would be, and what remains disputed — not a deal that has not yet been reached.
The timing is deliberate. The Brussels sessions follow earlier high-level consultations in Miami, in the United States, and in Oslo, where American, Ukrainian and European representatives examined the preliminary conditions for a durable peace. They also come immediately before trilateral working-level talks scheduled for November 10 and 11 in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, involving the United States, Ukraine and Russia. The sequence matters: the allies are trying to settle their own shared position first, so that Ukraine does not enter the Abu Dhabi room negotiating separately with both its partners and its adversary at the same time.
European Commission chief spokeswoman Paula Pinho formally announced the Brussels meeting at a press briefing on Tuesday, November 3, confirming that the Commission would host representatives of Ukraine, the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as NATO and the World Bank. Pinho said the discussions would focus on Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction and prosperity, and on building on the Miami talks with the aim of achieving a lasting and sustainable peace. She added that she had no information about direct participation by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the November 4 discussions at the Commission, a detail that matters because it confirms the Brussels sessions are working-level talks, not a leaders’ summit.
Ukraine security guarantees Brussels talks: who is in the room and what is on the table
According to the Ukrainian delegation’s own account, the Ukrainian team will work in Brussels on November 4 and 5 with partners on two linked tracks: detailed work on a postwar recovery and economic development programme known as the Prosperity Plan, and the provision of security guarantees for Ukraine. Rustem Umerov, who heads Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service and leads the delegation, said the meetings would continue the work begun in Florida and Oslo, with the aim of working out preliminary agreements on Ukraine’s long-term resilience, reconstruction and economic development in detail. The Commission is hosting the talks, and the World Bank’s presence signals that the economic track is being treated as seriously as the security track.
The two days have different emphases. The broader November 4 session covers reconstruction, prosperity and the overall framework, with the full range of participants including the Commission and the World Bank. On Thursday, November 5, the Ukrainian delegation will separately discuss security guarantees with representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as well as NATO. That narrower format reflects a practical reality: security guarantees are ultimately political and military commitments by states and by the alliance, and they require a different conversation from the one about rebuilding roads, power plants and housing.
Zelenskyy, speaking at a briefing in Berlin on November 3, confirmed the shape of the week: teams from Ukraine, the United States, Europe and NATO would meet in Brussels, discuss recovery packages and security guarantees, and work at team level. He also set out what he hopes the process leads to — a trilateral leaders’ summit that could actually end the war, with Europe participating — while acknowledging that such a summit is a goal to be prepared, not an event already scheduled. His framing is important because it distinguishes three stages that are often blurred in reporting: the allies’ coordination in Brussels, the negotiators’ meeting with Russia in Abu Dhabi, and a possible leaders’ meeting afterwards. Only the first two have dates.
The Prosperity Plan and the money behind reconstruction
The Prosperity Plan is the economic centrepiece of the Brussels agenda, and its significance is easier to grasp when set against the scale of Ukraine’s financing needs. Kyiv faces a large budget shortfall for next year, and its partners have spent recent weeks assembling support to bridge it. Canada and the European Union, for example, announced at their Montreal summit on October 30 that Canada would contribute an initial €500 million to the EU’s €90 billion support loan for Ukraine, a package intended to keep the Ukrainian state functioning and sustain essential services while longer-term funding is negotiated. Readers can find that background in our earlier report on Canada and the EU launching a new alliance, with Canada pledging €500 million to the €90 billion Ukraine loan as United States ties strain.
The Prosperity Plan, as described by Ukrainian officials, goes beyond emergency budget support. It is meant to be a detailed programme for postwar recovery and economic development: how reconstruction is sequenced, which sectors are rebuilt first, how private investment is attracted once fighting stops, and how Ukraine’s economy is integrated more closely with its partners. The involvement of the World Bank points in the same direction, since the Bank’s role in post-conflict settings is typically to assess damage and needs, help design reconstruction programmes, and channel financing through institutions that can account for it. None of that can be finalised while the war continues, which is why officials describe the Brussels work as detailed preparation rather than a finished plan.
That distinction also explains why reconstruction is being discussed alongside security guarantees rather than after them. Investors, donors and Ukrainian citizens alike need to know not only that money exists, but that rebuilt infrastructure will not simply be destroyed again. A reconstruction plan without a security framework is a promise without protection; a security framework without a reconstruction plan leaves a country intact but economically broken. The Brussels agenda tries to solve both problems together, and its test will be whether the detailed work produces commitments specific enough to survive contact with the Abu Dhabi negotiations.
Security guarantees: what Kyiv wants, what Moscow says, and what is still unresolved
Security guarantees are the most politically sensitive item on the Brussels agenda, and the hardest to define in a way that satisfies both Kyiv and its partners. For Ukraine, the purpose is straightforward: after a full-scale invasion that began in 2022 and has continued for nearly four years, Kyiv wants commitments from its partners that are strong enough to deter a future attack, not merely expressions of support that can be withdrawn when political winds change. That means questions that are easy to state and difficult to answer: which countries would commit, in what form, with what military capabilities behind the promise, and under what trigger would the commitment apply.
For Ukraine’s European partners, the guarantees debate is inseparable from a wider question about Europe’s own postwar security architecture. NATO’s participation in the Brussels talks underlines that point: any guarantee for Ukraine touches on the alliance’s posture, its members’ defence spending, and the relationship between bilateral commitments by individual states and collective commitments through NATO. European officials have also been wrestling, in parallel, with how to finance Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction in 2027 and beyond, including through the EU’s support loan and through joint procurement arrangements. The guarantees discussion therefore sits inside a larger European debate about whether the continent can provide for its own security with less reliance on the United States — a debate sharpened by recent tensions over American policy toward Ukraine and toward Europe more broadly.
Russia’s position, as stated by its own officials, is different in kind. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Russia’s participation in the Abu Dhabi talks on November 3, and reporting of Moscow’s position has said that security issues will be discussed there, but that any guarantees can only be mutual — a formulation that implies Russia itself would seek security assurances as part of a settlement, rather than accepting a one-sided Western guarantee for Ukraine. That framing is itself a point of contention: Kyiv and its partners argue that Ukraine, as the country invaded, is the party needing guarantees against renewed aggression, while Moscow presents its own security concerns as equally legitimate. The Brussels talks do not resolve that dispute, because Russia is not in the Brussels room; they prepare the allies’ position for a negotiation in which the dispute will be central.
It is also worth stating plainly what security guarantees are not. They are not NATO membership by another name, unless the states involved say so explicitly, and no such commitment has been announced in connection with the Brussels meeting. They are not a ceasefire, which is a separate question about halting fighting. And they are not a peace treaty, which would require agreement with Russia on territory, borders and the political terms of a settlement. Conflating those categories is one of the most common sources of confusion in reporting on Ukraine diplomacy, and the Brussels agenda is best understood as preparation on one component — the guarantees and reconstruction framework — of a much larger settlement that remains unagreed.
What Kyiv wants to raise in Abu Dhabi, and the limits of the Brussels format
Zelenskyy has set out four priorities he wants raised in the Abu Dhabi process, and they show how the Brussels preparation connects to the trilateral talks. The first is energy: a ceasefire covering strikes on energy and critical infrastructure, which have left Ukrainian civilians without power and heating as winter approaches. The second is grain and the unblocking of the Black Sea, which matters not only to Ukraine and Russia but to countries across Africa and Asia that depend on Black Sea exports. The third is prisoner exchanges, with Kyiv favouring an all-for-all exchange but seeking at minimum more frequent exchanges and the return of its people. The fourth is preparation for a leaders’-level trilateral meeting, with Europe’s participation, which Zelenskyy argues is the only format capable of ending the war.
Those priorities also reveal the limits of what Brussels can deliver on its own. Energy ceasefires and Black Sea access require Russian agreement, and cannot be settled in a room Russia is not attending. Prisoner exchanges require direct negotiation with Moscow, and have historically proceeded through separate channels. A leaders’ summit requires the leaders themselves to agree to meet, and no such meeting has been confirmed. Brussels can align the allies, detail the reconstruction plan, and clarify what guarantees the partners are prepared to offer. It cannot, by itself, end the war, and any reporting that presents it as doing so would overstate its role.
The wider diplomatic backdrop reinforces that caution. A meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Twenty countries in Atlanta on October 30 and 31, under the United States’ rotating presidency, was reported to be at risk of ending without a joint statement, amid deep disagreements over the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and over Washington’s policies toward Russia. The United States did not invite South Africa’s foreign minister to that meeting, while Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, attended, and European officials used the occasion to press for increased support for Kyiv. That episode is a reminder that the Western allies do not speak with one voice on every question, and that the Brussels effort to forge a unified framework is taking place against a background of real disagreement, not unanimity.
There is also a question about the United States’ own role that Brussels cannot settle. American policy toward Ukraine has shifted repeatedly, and European officials have openly worried about the durability of American support, including the future of American weapons supplies for Ukraine and the scale of the American military presence in Europe. The Brussels talks include the United States, which is itself significant: American participation in the guarantees discussion suggests Washington remains engaged in shaping a settlement, even as European capitals hedge against the possibility that engagement may narrow. Whether that participation produces concrete American commitments, or remains at the level of coordination, is one of the main things to watch in the readouts from November 4 and 5.
What happens next: Abu Dhabi, and the questions Brussels must answer first
The immediate next step after Brussels is Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11, where delegations from the United States, Ukraine and Russia are scheduled to meet at working level, with American negotiators including special envoy Steve Witkoff, who first announced the trilateral round. Those talks will focus, according to the announcements so far, on further steps toward peace, including the security and humanitarian questions outlined above. No agenda beyond that broad description has been published, and no outcome has been pre-announced — which is itself a reason to treat any claim of an imminent breakthrough with scepticism.
Before Abu Dhabi, the Brussels sessions need to answer, or at least narrow, several questions. First, can the allies agree on the substance of the security guarantees they are prepared to offer, in terms specific enough to present to Russia as a coherent position? Second, is the Prosperity Plan detailed enough to show how reconstruction would be financed and sequenced, rather than remaining a statement of intent? Third, how do the allies handle the relationship between the Brussels framework and the Abu Dhabi negotiation — in particular, which elements are presented as conditions, which as openings for discussion, and which as matters for leaders to decide later? The readouts from November 4 and 5 will be judged against those questions, not against the mere fact that a meeting took place.
For Ukrainians, the stakes of getting those answers right are immediate and human. Every week of delay in a settlement is another week of strikes on energy infrastructure, another week in which grain shipments face uncertainty, and another week in which prisoners remain separated from their families. For the allies, the stakes are institutional: whether a framework built in Brussels can hold together through a negotiation with Moscow, and whether Europe and the United States can present a position that is both united and realistic. The Brussels talks are a step toward answering those questions. They are not the answer itself, and USN will update this story when the sessions conclude and when the Abu Dhabi talks begin.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Ukrainska Pravda, LB.ua and Brussels Morning.