Zelenskyy Signals New U.S.-Brokered Track With Russia, With Abu Dhabi Talks in Play

On a winter night in Kyiv, as air-raid sirens wailed and Russian missiles again targeted Ukrainian cities, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used his nightly televised address to focus on a different battlefield: hotel conference rooms in Geneva and a possible meeting in Abu Dhabi.

“There is already more readiness for the next trilateral format,” Zelenskyy said in a Feb. 26 video message, referring to talks involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia.

He said the next meeting would “most likely” take place in Abu Dhabi in early March and added that the goal was to “finalize everything that has been achieved in terms of real security guarantees and prepare a meeting at the level of leaders.”

A structured diplomatic track emerges

The remarks were the clearest public signal yet that, after more than four years of full-scale war, Ukraine is now openly engaged in a structured, U.S.-brokered diplomatic track with Russia. While no cease-fire or political settlement is in sight, the emerging process centered on Geneva and Abu Dhabi is intended to move the conflict from an attritional front-line stalemate toward negotiations over borders, security guarantees and reconstruction—possibly culminating in a direct meeting between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The stakes are high for all sides. Any agreement would shape Ukraine’s future map and the security order in Europe, test the credibility of U.S. guarantees to a non-NATO partner and determine whether Russia’s wartime territorial gains become entrenched or remain contested. At home, leaders in both Ukraine and Russia face constituencies deeply skeptical of compromise. For Washington, the effort is entwined with President Donald Trump’s promise to “end the war quickly” and with a widening conflict with Iran that is complicating the choice of venue.

Talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva

The current diplomatic push has taken shape over several rounds since January. Delegations from Ukraine, Russia and the United States met in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 23–24 and again on Feb. 4–5, in the first formal trilateral negotiations since early, failed attempts in 2022 to end the invasion through talks in Istanbul and elsewhere. Those Abu Dhabi rounds focused on core issues: Russian demands for Ukrainian withdrawal from occupied regions, Ukrainian insistence on territorial integrity, and the outlines of possible security guarantees and economic arrangements.

On Feb. 17–18, the three delegations reconvened at a hotel in Geneva for a third round. People familiar with the talks described them as difficult but businesslike, with some progress on technical matters such as prisoner exchanges and possible cease-fire monitoring mechanisms, but little movement on territory or the status of regions Russia claims to have annexed.

The Feb. 26 meetings in Geneva were narrower but, for Kyiv, consequential. Senior Ukrainian officials, including National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov and economic ministers, met a U.S. team led by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, along with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Those talks were bilateral—Russia was not in the room—and concentrated on the shape of long-term security guarantees for Ukraine and a proposed “Prosperity Package” of reconstruction and investment reportedly valued at hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.

Separately, Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, held quiet talks with U.S. representatives at another Geneva hotel, according to people briefed on the meetings. There is no public confirmation that Ukrainian and Russian officials met face to face that day.

In his address that evening, Zelenskyy said he had spoken several times with Umerov, ruling party faction leader Davyd Arakhamia and the U.S. envoys. He framed the next trilateral meeting with Russia and the United States—tentatively slated for early March—as a chance “to finalize everything that has been achieved in terms of real security guarantees.” He reiterated that Ukraine views Russia as unwilling to end the war on acceptable terms and called for continued pressure through sanctions, particularly on Russian energy and banking.

Venue uncertainty amid Middle East escalation

Although Zelenskyy spoke of a “trilateral format” and outlets have pointed to Abu Dhabi as the likely venue, officials acknowledge the location is now uncertain. A sharp escalation between the United States, Israel and Iran in late February—including Iranian missile and drone strikes on targets in the United Arab Emirates—has raised security and logistical concerns about hosting sensitive talks in the Gulf.

Zelenskyy has publicly backed U.S. strikes on Iranian targets, calling Iran an “accomplice of Putin” for supplying drones used in attacks on Ukrainian cities. At the same time, he has warned that a broader Middle East conflict could disrupt weapons supplies to Ukraine. He has said the trilateral talks are still planned for roughly March 5–9 but could be moved to Europe, mentioning Switzerland, Turkey, Austria or even the Vatican as alternatives. He has said he favors a European venue “because the war is on our continent.”

The hardest questions: security and territory

Behind the venue decision lie more fundamental questions, especially how to provide Ukraine with credible long-term security without NATO membership. Officials involved in or briefed on the discussions say U.S. envoys have outlined a framework in which Ukraine would maintain a large standing army—on the order of several hundred thousand troops—heavily armed and trained by Western states. A separate multinational force, made up of volunteers from allied countries, could be deployed as part of a cease-fire monitoring or peacekeeping mission along a new line of contact.

Zelenskyy and his advisers insist any guarantees must be enforceable and go beyond the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“We will not accept another paper that can be ignored the next time Moscow decides to attack,” one senior Ukrainian official said recently.

For Russia, U.S.-backed security guarantees for Ukraine remain sensitive but, analysts say, not necessarily unworkable if paired with concessions on territory and Western sanctions. Putin has repeatedly said Russia’s “new regions”—occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson—are not negotiable, and Russian negotiators have pressed for Ukraine to withdraw from remaining Ukrainian-held areas in those regions.

Zelenskyy has signaled limited flexibility. He has said discussions have at times focused on about 5,800 square kilometers in the Donbas, roughly corresponding to Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk region. But he has drawn a line against formally ceding territory. “I will never leave Donbas,” he told Ukrainian media. Ukrainian officials have instead floated the possibility of freezing the conflict along current front lines without recognizing Russian sovereignty over occupied territories, potentially with demilitarized zones or special economic arrangements in contested areas.

Reconstruction and sanctions in the background

Economic issues are woven through the talks. The proposed “Prosperity Package,” discussed in detail in Geneva on Feb. 26, would inject large sums of Western public and private money into rebuilding Ukraine’s shattered infrastructure, housing and energy grid, and into integrating the country more deeply into European and global supply chains. U.S. officials have also raised the prospect of using some frozen Russian assets to fund reconstruction, though legal and political obstacles remain substantial.

For Moscow, Dmitriev’s presence in the Geneva contacts suggests that future sanctions relief and opportunities for foreign investment—whether in Russia or in contested regions—are among the issues under quiet discussion, even if neither side has set out public terms.

An unusual U.S. team, and political constraints at home

The U.S. mediation effort is being closely watched in Europe and beyond, in part because of its unusual cast of envoys. Witkoff is a real estate developer and longtime Trump ally; Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, now reemerging as a diplomatic figure in both Middle East and Ukraine tracks. Bessent, a financier, oversees the economic dimension as Treasury secretary. Supporters argue the team brings access to capital and a dealmaking mentality; critics question potential conflicts of interest and the emphasis on speed.

In Ukraine, public opinion adds another layer of complexity. After years of casualties, blackouts and displacement, polls show widespread exhaustion with the war but also deep distrust of Russia and strong resistance to territorial concessions. Any settlement that freezes the front lines while leaving large areas under Russian control, or that offers only vague guarantees, could trigger protests from veterans, opposition figures and civil society groups. Parliament would have to approve key elements of any deal, making Arakhamia’s role as liaison between negotiators and lawmakers critical.

In Russia, the Kremlin’s control over media and public space has limited visible pressure for peace, but the government faces its own constraints. The leadership has presented the war as a defensive struggle and the annexations as irreversible. Accepting a heavily armed, U.S.-backed Ukraine on its border—or relinquishing any occupied territory—could be difficult to reconcile with that narrative.

A fragile path toward a possible summit

For now, the diplomacy remains fragile. The March trilateral, wherever it takes place, will again confront questions that have defied resolution since 2014: where to draw lines on the map, how to verify and enforce any pause in fighting, and what security and economic architecture could prevent a new war.

Zelenskyy has made clear he wants the talks to lead to a direct meeting with Putin under U.S. auspices—a summit that, if it happens, would be the most consequential encounter between the two leaders since the invasion began. The Kremlin has not publicly committed to such a meeting.

Until it does, Ukraine’s president, his troops and his citizens are left straddling two fronts: one in the trenches along a largely static line of contact, the other in conference rooms where the contours of a possible peace are being drafted but not yet agreed.