Russia, US and Ukraine return to the table: summit in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11

According to a statement from the Kremlin reported by Mediafax, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that a new round of talks will bring together delegations from Russia, the United States and Ukraine in the capital of the United Arab Emirates starting November 10, for two days. It will be the first trilateral meeting since February: the Russian delegation will be led by presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, while for the United States, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the American president’s son-in-law, are expected to take part, according to Adnkronos, which cites statements made by Donald Trump himself to the press.

The announcement comes as the war on the ground shows no sign of slowing. On the eve of the negotiations, six people — including a minor — lost their lives and five Ukrainian regions were left without electricity after a new Russian offensive against energy infrastructure, according to the report from Kyiv by Vatican News. It is against this backdrop that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly taken a stance on the format of the negotiations set to open in three days.

“We do not want a new Yalta” — Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine

The statement, reported by the same Vatican source, should be read as a claim: Kyiv is demanding to remain an active party in any negotiation concerning its own territory, not a subject whose fate is decided over its head. The historical reference — never made explicit in the text of the statement but implicit in the name itself — signals Ukraine’s concern that an agreement between major powers could define borders and spheres of influence without any genuine veto power for Kyiv.

The Abu Dhabi table is not the only diplomatic channel in motion at this hour. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated that Beijing is in contact with interested parties regarding a possible meeting between the heads of state of China, the United States and Russia, according to Washington Post and NBC News, both sourced from the Associated Press. The possible three-way summit would take place this month on the sidelines of a regional summit in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, where Trump is expected to travel to meet Xi Jinping for the third time this year, in an attempt to keep alive a trade truce set to expire in January. According to analysts cited by the US press, the meeting could amount to nothing more than a group photo without substantial outcomes.

Two parallel tracks thus appear to be taking shape: the Abu Dhabi track, narrower and focused on the Ukrainian file with American mediation, and the Chinese track, broader and less defined, which intertwines the war in Ukraine with the trade dispute between Washington and Beijing. Neither of the two sources consulted indicates a direct link between the two paths, nor any hierarchy between them.

What remains is that, after months of deadlock, Moscow, Washington and Kyiv are set to sit at the same table again in three days, while on the eastern front the offensive against Ukrainian energy infrastructure had not stopped in the hours immediately preceding the announcement of the negotiations.