Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after Tuesday's trilateral talks in the United Arab Emirates that the first day was "very productive," while making clear there is still a lot of work to be done, Reuters reported. Rubio said it is a goal, at some point, to expand the trilateral talks to include other European voices.
Rubio also met Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on Tuesday, posting that they discussed the ongoing negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war, energy resilience and defence cooperation, and that the United States "remains focused on achieving a durable and lasting peace."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after being briefed by Kyiv's negotiators, called the first day "constructive and quite substantive" in his own post. He said the teams discussed the need and possible parameters for humanitarian steps, that the release of prisoners is a priority, and that they spoke in detail about the substance of security guarantees for Ukraine and the foundations for making those guarantees work over the long term.
Speaking to students during his visit to Denmark, Zelenskyy said prisoner-of-war exchanges and bringing back Ukraine's children had been discussed at the talks, with security guarantees also on the agenda. He said he gave his team clear instructions for further dialogue — both in the trilateral format tomorrow and more broadly, over the coming days, with envoys of the U.S. President and representatives of Europe — and he thanked the American side for organising the negotiations and the UAE for providing the platform.
Denmark announced a donation of 4.8 billion kroner ($720 million) in military aid as Zelenskyy visited Copenhagen, though Copenhagen did not say which weapons or equipment the package covers or when it will be delivered. Zelenskyy has been urging allies to accelerate deliveries of Patriot interceptor missiles, by far the most effective weapon Ukraine has for downing Russia's ballistic missiles.
The talks broke up after about four hours and are expected to resume on Wednesday. Ukraine's delegation also spoke with representatives of NATO and Europe as part of its mission.
For American households, a negotiated end to this war means steadier energy and food prices and less pressure for U.S. spending abroad — and Tuesday's burden-sharing ran in the direction Washington has demanded, with Denmark putting up $720 million of its own money while America leads the diplomacy.
— Previously posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2026 —
Washington is putting the central question of the Abu Dhabi peace talks in writing. The American team will formally ask the Russian delegation on Tuesday to accept, as part of a peace deal, language from the NATO treaty itself: Article 4-style and Article 5-style security guarantees for Ukraine — the first time the United States has made the request, two senior administration officials say.
The proposal has two parts. Under the Article 4-like guarantee, if Ukraine feels threatened by Russia, Kyiv could seek consultations with its Western allies — mirroring the NATO treaty article that lets any member bring a threat to its security before the others. Under the Article 5-like guarantee, if Russia attacks again, the United States and its allies would launch a coordinated military response — mirroring the treaty's collective-defence clause, under which an attack on one is treated as an attack on all.
"This is not NATO membership, but it extends them the guarantees [of Articles 4 and 5] without a formal process," a senior American official negotiating the deal said. The language would be written into the U.S.-brokered peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, according to the official, and envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are leading the discussions on the enlarged proposal.
It is a notable turn for President Donald Trump, who has consistently blocked Ukraine's membership in NATO: the plan would formalize an American and European military commitment to defend Ukraine from future Russian aggression inside a peace agreement, without Ukraine joining the alliance. The enlarged proposal is a revision of the 28-point peace plan drafted by the U.S. and Russia and first presented to Ukrainian officials in late October, which Ukrainian and European leaders reacted to with horror, calling it too generous to Russia.
Moscow has refused to comment publicly on the talks and has never suggested it would agree to such guarantees, which would effectively restrain its ability to attack Ukraine without consequences. Several European allies say Russia will never agree to them, which has deepened skepticism about the round. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for his part, may balk at signing a deal that cedes land to Russia, and he said last week, when Witkoff and Kushner visited Kyiv, that he would not allow the American envoys to dictate the terms of Ukraine's surrender.
The guarantee also has a hard limit the administration states openly: Trump has said Washington will not commit American troops to Ukraine, and a senior official put it plainly — "The president is not in a mode to pledge U.S. troops to Europe." For American families, that is the balance the Abu Dhabi round is trying to strike: a peace backed by a real Western guarantee strong enough to deter another invasion, delivered without putting U.S. soldiers on Ukrainian soil — an end to the war's open-ended costs that does not trade one commitment for a bigger one.
— Previously posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2026 —
The first day of the three-way talks between the United States, Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi ended on Tuesday after about four hours, with no breakthrough announced and the delegations set to resume on Wednesday morning. It was the first time the three sides had sat down together since February, and the opening session was devoted to the future security guarantees at the heart of any settlement.
President Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are brokering the talks, came out of the room upbeat about the direction. Kushner said the two sides believed there were "some good ideas how to bridge" the differences, and he laid out what the American team is trying to build: "We take what's worked, we try to identify what's failed, why we're in this position and hopefully create a new framework that leads us for decades, if not centuries, of peace."
Asked about the question Europeans keep putting to them — whether Vladimir Putin is really ready for peace — Kushner gave a direct answer. "Most of the questions of Europeans concern whether Russia and President Putin are really ready for peace. From what Steve and I have heard from Putin, we can quite confidently say yes, under the right conditions," he said, adding that the Russians are asking the same question of the Ukrainians and the Europeans: whether they are really ready for peace.
Before the trilateral session, the Ukrainian team met the American envoys together with representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission, and the partners issued a joint statement reaffirming that any settlement must respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, provide credible security guarantees, and keep a strong NATO at the centre of Europe's collective defence.
Rustem Umerov, who leads Kyiv's delegation, thanked the United States for brokering the round. "Our people are waiting to end this war. And we hope that we will achieve the lasting peace for Ukraine," he said. NATO's supreme allied commander, General Alexus Grynkewich, who sat in on the talks, pointed to "some great progress in the past in a military-to-military dialogue in a trilateral format" and said the American side looked forward "to working with both sides to set the foundations for a lasting peace." Vladimir Medinsky, who heads the Russian delegation, said Moscow hoped the meeting "will allow us to advance on the path towards peace in the interests of the people of Russia and the people of Ukraine."
The distance between the two sides going in was no secret. President Putin wants Ukraine to pull its troops out of the four regions Russia annexed in September 2022, abandon its bid to join NATO, accept strict limits on its military, and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church, and he has argued against a general halt to the fighting on the grounds that it would let Ukraine rest and replenish. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Denmark on Tuesday, rejects giving up territory and any limits on Ukraine's military or its Western arrangements, and Kyiv argues an immediate ceasefire is the necessary first step, with only a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy able to settle the territory question — a meeting Putin has so far refused.
The war did not pause for the talks. Overnight, Russia launched 162 drones of various types and a ballistic missile at Ukraine, according to Ukraine's air force, while Russia's defence ministry said its forces shot down 155 Ukrainian drones over eight Russian regions and Crimea. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking on Monday night, had lowered expectations in advance: "I don't have overly high expectations."
President Trump said last week that a grand European-security deal is in the works — "a big agreement" that is "going to involve more than Ukraine" — and Kushner said on Monday that a comprehensive settlement will also require direct engagement between Russia and European partners on the broader security arrangements. Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, welcomed the American negotiators "proposing to put the issue of collective security on top of the agenda." Some in Europe see Washington's proposals as too accommodating to Moscow, and Russia had objected to Europeans sitting in the three-way talks, though it said European representatives could join later.
For ordinary families on both sides, a settlement built on real security guarantees is the difference between another winter of drone strikes, blackouts and funerals and a durable peace they can plan a life around — and for American taxpayers, a deal that holds is what finally ends the open-ended cost of a war in Europe that Washington has carried for more than four years.
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