For the first time in more than eight months, Russia, Ukraine and the United States are preparing to sit in the same room again — and the argument over who else belongs in that room has already begun. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday 28 October 2026 that European countries will not be invited to the next round of trilateral talks, expected in Abu Dhabi in November. “We have agreed to resume trilateral talks, with representatives from Russia, Ukraine and the United States participating,” Ushakov said. “European countries can attend if they buy tickets. But nobody intends to invite them to the negotiating table.”
The remark, delivered to Russian media and reported by Interfax, landed while Ukraine’s president was publicly asking for the opposite. Speaking in The Hague on Wednesday after meeting Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv wanted Europe involved in the talks, argued that unity and stronger pressure on Russia were needed, and gave the meeting a window — 6 to 10 November in the United Arab Emirates — that Moscow has not confirmed. Between those two statements lies the state of the peace process in late October 2026: a format agreed in principle, a venue proposed, a date disputed, and the war’s largest backers’ alliance split over whether Europe gets a chair.
Russia bars Europe from the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi
Russia’s position was stated without ambiguity. Ushakov said the possible participation of European countries had not even been discussed during a 90-minute phone call on Tuesday between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said a day earlier, on 27 October, that neither Stubb nor Støre had offered any new proposals to resolve the conflict during their contacts with Moscow.
Yet the accounts of that diplomacy do not line up — and the disagreement is itself part of the story. Stubb, speaking at a meeting of the Nordic Council in Helsinki, gave a different version: he said European countries would be involved in November’s Abu Dhabi talks. Zelenskyy, for his part, has repeatedly insisted that Europe must be present, arguing that security guarantees for Ukraine cannot be discussed without Europe at the table, and that no European country should be excluded from the process of ending the war.
Context sharpens the dispute. European governments that support Kyiv have been excluded from all three previous rounds of the trilateral format, and they have been pressing, with increasing openness, for a direct role. Moscow’s counter-argument, running through Russian statements, is that Europe’s financial and military support for Ukraine makes it a party to the conflict rather than a neutral mediator, and that its presence would prolong rather than settle the war. Kyiv’s counter-counter-argument is simple: Europe is paying for much of Ukraine’s survival, European security is what the war is ultimately about, and a settlement negotiated over Europe’s head would lack the guarantees needed to hold.
Two calendars: Kyiv says November 6 to 10, Moscow says the battlefield decides
Even the date is contested. Zelenskyy said the trilateral meeting should happen between 6 and 10 November, that Washington was expected to confirm a date around 4 November — the day after the US midterm elections — and that the location could still change depending on the situation in the Middle East. He said Ukraine needed the meeting to happen by the end of November at the latest.
Ushakov offered no such commitment. The start of negotiations, he said, would depend on “the situation on the battlefield and the overall situation.” The Kremlin has sent no signals yet on an exact date, he added, although Abu Dhabi “after Nov. 4” was possible, and although the core of the Russian delegation is in place, its composition has not been finalized. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was blunter still about the venue: it was too early to talk about Abu Dhabi, he said, the idea existed as a preliminary agreement, and everything remained in the preparatory stage.
The revival of the format itself followed a meeting in St. Petersburg on 21 October between Putin and Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy, after which Moscow said it was ready to resume consultations in the second week of November, with a security framework for Russia and Ukraine as the main topic. The history is not encouraging: a previous round planned for late September, after Russia’s State Duma elections, was called off by the Kremlin, which accused Ukraine of attacks on election day, including against election commissions. Ushakov repeated that accusation this week, claiming an agreed round had been disrupted by the Ukrainians themselves. Kyiv’s version of those events differs, and the mutual blame over a meeting that never happened now hangs over the scheduling of one that might.
What the technical talks would actually cover
If the meeting takes place, it is not expected to be a peace conference in the grand sense. Ukrainian officials say the immediate agenda is technical: a potential energy ceasefire, under which both sides would stop striking each other’s power infrastructure; a maritime ceasefire; exchanges of military and civilian captives; and the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia — an issue that has become one of the most emotionally charged of the war.
Zelenskyy’s own framing is modest. He has described a path in which one or two rounds of technical talks could pave the way for a trilateral summit between himself, Trump and Putin, and has stressed that territorial questions — above all Moscow’s demand that Kyiv cede the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which Russian forces have been unable to capture in full — can only be decided at the leaders’ level. Moscow and Washington are both expected to prioritise territory, but Ukrainian officials do not expect a major breakthrough in Abu Dhabi; their stated hope is narrower, to restart a regular negotiating process that has been stalled while the Kremlin rejected Western-backed proposals for a full and unconditional ceasefire that Kyiv had supported.
That is the unresolved core of the matter. Russia continues to demand territorial concessions as the price of ending a war it started, and has declined ceasefire proposals that would freeze the lines without them. Ukraine continues to insist that its territory is not negotiable at a technical table and that any settlement without security guarantees — guarantees it says require Europe — would merely pause the war. The United States, which eased sanctions on Russia earlier in the process and whose confirmation of the November date is now the next expected step, sits between them as the only participant both sides will currently talk to.
Why Europe’s exclusion matters for any deal that follows
The argument about chairs in Abu Dhabi is not really about chairs. A settlement of this war will require things only Europe can supply in volume: money for reconstruction, troops or monitors for any guarantee force, membership pathways, and the sanctions relief or continued pressure that gives Kyiv leverage. A deal drafted without Europe risks being a deal Europe is asked to pay for without having shaped — a formula European governments have resisted in every previous round from which they were shut out.
There is also the question of what exclusion signals. Moscow’s “buy tickets” line was not diplomatic boilerplate; it was a public dismissal, aimed as much at European capitals as at Kyiv, designed to underline that Russia regards the negotiation as a three-power conversation in which Europe is an audience. Stubb’s contradictory account from Helsinki — insisting Europeans would be involved — suggests at least some European leaders either expect that to change or are unwilling to accept the dismissal publicly. Something has to give between those two versions before November, and what gives will say a great deal about how much unity the Western side actually brings to the table.
For now, the verifiable facts are these. A fourth round of trilateral talks has been agreed in principle. Abu Dhabi has been proposed, not confirmed. Kyiv wants 6 to 10 November and wants Europe in the room. Moscow says the battlefield will decide the timing and Europe will not be in the room. Washington, whose midterms end on 3 November, is expected to speak next. The war, meanwhile, is in its fifth year, and the distance between the statements of 28 October and an actual ceasefire remains the distance this process has failed to close three times before.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Al Jazeera, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.