As the Russian-Ukrainian war, which long ago entered a phase of attrition, grinds on, Russia, Ukraine and the United States began a new round of US-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, on November ۱۰. The talks are scheduled to continue on November ۱۱.
The talks follow a successful humanitarian operation in Oleshky, a southern Ukrainian town that has been occupied by Russian forces since ۲۰۲۲.
Starting in December ۲۰۲۵, Oleshky experienced a food crisis that worsened dramatically in the summer of this year. Over the years under Russian occupation, its population declined from ۲۵,۰۰۰ to ۲,۰۰۰ people, and the food crisis threatened the survival of those who remained. In the summer, however, Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services agreed to work on a local ceasefire in order to evacuate Oleshky’s inhabitants – if they wanted to leave – either to Ukraine or to Russia.
The humanitarian mission went surprisingly smoothly. Both sides stood by the ceasefire agreement, hundreds of people were successfully evacuated (mostly to Ukraine) from the long-suffering town, and it was extraordinary to see the Ukrainian and Russian human rights representatives, Dmytro Lubinets and Yana Lantratova, coordinating the humanitarian mission peacefully and with mutual respect.
Can this successful mission lay the groundwork for – or at least contribute to – progress in the Abu Dhabi peace negotiations brokered by the US between Russia and Ukraine? Several factors suggest that this is unlikely.
One immediate indicator is that the success of the mission in Oleshky was driven not by Moscow’s desire for peace but by its willingness to pander to Donald Trump’s vanity against the background of his animosity towards Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
It has long been known that Trump wanted to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. However, despite his claims that he has ended countless wars around the world, Trump is unlikely to receive this prestigious award. Today, it seems that the Trump family’s plan is to try to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for Melania Trump.
The Oleshky humanitarian mission seems to be a case in point. A few days before the ceasefire, the White House announced that it was Melania Trump – in “her formal role as Exclusive Intermediary” – who had initiated discussions on the ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine, thus dismissing not only the Vatican’s efforts to secure the Oleshky ceasefire, but also the fact that Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services had already begun discussing the temporary armistice in the summer. Moscow, however, readily backed Washington’s version of Melania Trump’s critical role in the agreement, and Kyiv had to align with that version, too.
Both Russia and Ukraine are seeking to win Donald Trump over to their side, but while both countries eventually agreed to play along with the White House’s promotion of the US first lady as a “peacemaker”, Moscow presumably considered that the success of the Oleshky humanitarian mission would benefit it more than Kyiv. Putin’s apparent reasoning here is that Moscow’s apparent willingness to cooperate may deepen Trump’s disaffection with Zelenskyy and strengthen his delusion that it is Ukraine rather than Russia that is blocking the path to the end of the war. For Putin, winning Trump over would be a way to continue the aggression against Ukraine under more favourable circumstances – not a way to come to peace with Ukraine.
Another factor suggesting that the Abu Dhabi talks are unlikely to result in progress towards lasting peace is that Moscow appointed Vladimir Medinsky, Putin’s aide, as the head of the Russian delegation for the talks in the UAE. Medinsky headed the Russian delegations for the negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul in ۲۰۲۲ and ۲۰۲۵, and his reappointment as the delegation’s leader for Abu Dhabi suggests that the Russian position on Ukraine has not changed since the Istanbul negotiations. The only acceptable outcome of the war for Russia remains Ukraine’s surrender, and surrender was unacceptable to Ukraine in ۲۰۲۲ and ۲۰۲۵, and remains so today.
However, Putin appears to believe that Russia is in a stronger negotiating position than Ukraine, and his belief is grounded in both erroneous and realistic assumptions.
On the one hand, it is a mistake on Putin’s part to assume that the constant Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, including energy and water supplies, can undermine Ukrainians’ resilience to the point where they will demand that the authorities surrender to Russia or rebel against the government. Ukraine is fighting an existential war, in which surrender means death, torture and ethnic cleansing – practices characteristic of Russian rule in the currently occupied Ukrainian territories. Ukrainians simply have no choice other than to resist the Russian aggression.
On the other hand, Moscow is correctly assessing developments across the West, where continuing support for Ukraine is being challenged on several fronts. While European nations keep financing weapons supplies for Ukraine’s defence, a large share of the weapons the country needs comes from the US. The joint US-Israeli war against Iran depleted some US stockpiles, and US capacity to restock them is limited, which creates a significant gap in Ukraine’s offensive and defensive efforts, especially when it comes to air defence. The Democratic Party’s victory in the US midterm elections will hardly change the situation, even though the party has been more favourable to Ukraine than the Republicans: the shortage of weapons that the US can sell to Ukraine via its allies is a material rather than a political issue.
Moreover, the continued military and economic support that Ukraine receives from its European and other allies depends not only on the political consensus among those allies about the need for such support, but also on the individual positions of those allies. France will hold a presidential election in the first half of ۲۰۲۷, potentially followed by snap parliamentary elections, and the right-wing nationalist party National Rally has a good chance of securing both the presidency and the premiership of the French Republic. Its informal leader, Marine Le Pen, who has announced that she will stand for the presidency in the spring of next year, has already said that France can no longer provide financial assistance to Ukraine, implying that she would stop that financial aid if elected president. Despite the fact that France is the second-largest economy in the EU, it is only the fifth-largest bilateral EU donor to Ukraine; but France is an influential European country, and if it stops financial support for Ukraine, this may produce a domino effect among some other EU countries and create more economic and internal political pressure on those EU governments that continue to aid Ukraine.
Marine Le Pen, whose party received financial support from Russia in ۲۰۱۴ and who met Putin personally in Moscow in ۲۰۱۷, is most likely Russia’s best bet for ۲۰۲۷ with regard to weakening Ukraine’s defence. But this is not the only bet. In Germany, the right-wing nationalist party Alternative for Germany is surging in the polls, and it is the largest openly pro-Putin and pro-Trump party in the EU. And Trump himself, despite his Republican Party’s losses in the ۲۰۲۶ US midterm elections, remains one of Russia’s important bets in the context of the Russian war.
The fact that Russia participated in the trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi is not a sign that it is ready for peace with Ukraine. It is not – Russia hopes that Western support for Ukraine will wither away, and believes it has the resources to wait for that hypothetical moment.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
