Powerless

The lack of any substantive breakthrough was fairly predictable, given the circumstances. This week’s meeting got off to the same depressing start as the first one had the week before. On 3 February, the night before the three sides gathered in Abu Dhabi, a massive barrage of 521 drones and cruise missiles once again targeted critical civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv.

And while the talks were in full swing, Russia followed up on its nighttime strikes by deploying cluster munitions against a market in Druzhkivka, one of the embattled cities in what remains of Ukraine’s fortress belt in the Donetsk region.

Not the most auspicious start to talks that aim to stop fighting between the two sides. Add to that the fact that the basic negotiating positions of Moscow and Kyiv remain as far apart as ever, and any prospect of an imminent breakthrough to peace in Ukraine quickly evaporates.

The more technical discussions on military issues, including specifics of a ceasefire and how it would be monitored, appear to be generally more constructive. Apart from a prisoner exchange, no further agreement was reached. But even such small confidence-building steps are useful. And even where no agreement is feasible for now, identifying likely issues and mapping solutions that are potentially acceptable to Moscow and Kyiv is important preparatory work for a future settlement.

However, without a breakthrough on political issues it does not get the conflict parties closer to a peace deal. These political issues remain centred on the question of territory. Russia insists on the so-called “Anchorage formula”. Ukraine withdraws from those areas of Donetsk it still controls and Russia agrees to freezing the frontlines elsewhere. Kyiv has repeatedly made clear that this is unacceptable. US mediation efforts, to date, have been unable to break this deadlock.

The political impasse, however, clearly extends beyond territory. Without naming any specific blockages to a deal, Yury Ushakov, a key advisor to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, recently noted that there were other contested issues holding up agreement. Very likely among them are the security guarantees that Ukraine has been demanding to make sure that Russia will not renege on a settlement.

These future security guarantees appear to have been agreed between Kyiv and its European and American partners. They involve a gradual escalating response to Russian ceasefire violations, ultimately involving direct European and US military involvement.

The Kremlin’s opposition to such an arrangement is hardly surprising. But it casts further doubt on how sincere Putin is about a durable peace agreement with Ukraine. In turn, it explains Kyiv’s reluctance to make any concessions, let alone those on the current scale of Russian demands.

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Giving up Donbas in return for US security guarantees could be fatal misstep for Ukraine

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Giving up Donbas in return for US security guarantees could be fatal misstep for Ukraine

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What complicates these discussions further is the fact that the US is linking the provision of security guarantees for Kyiv to Ukrainian concessions on territory along the lines of the Moscow-endorsed Anchorage formula.

This might seem a sensible and fair compromise, but there are some obvious problems with it. First, it relies on the dependability of the US as an ultimate security backstop. But — particularly European — confidence in how dependable US pledges actually are has been severely eroded during the first 12 months of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

Second, Europe is moving painfully slowly to fill the void left by the US decision to halt funding to Ukraine. The details of a €90 billion loan agreed in principle by EU leaders in December, have only just been finalised. Doubts — as voiced by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — also persist about whether, even in the long term, Europe has a credible prospect of developing sufficiently independent military capabilities outside the transatlantic alliance.

As a result, there are few incentives for Kyiv to bow to US pressure and give up more territory to Russia in exchange for security guarantees that may not be as ironclad in reality as they appear on paper. Likewise, it makes little sense for Moscow to accept even a hypothetical western security guarantee in exchange for territory that the Kremlin remains confident it can take by force if necessary.

Following Xi Jinping’s public affirmation of Chinese support for Russia in a video call between the two countries’ presidents on the anniversary of the declaration of their “no-limits partnership” in February 2022, Putin is unlikely to feel any real pressure to change his position.

Putin will feel further reassured in his position by the fact that there is still no progress on a new sanctions bill in the US Senate — four weeks after Trump allegedly “greenlit” the legislation. In addition, Trump’s top Ukraine negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — are now also engaged in negotiations with Iran. This further diminishes US diplomatic capacity and is only going to reinforce Moscow’s intransigence.

Any claims of progress in the negotiations in Abu Dhabi are therefore at best over-optimistic and at worst self-deluding. And if such claims come from Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, they once more underscore that US mediation between Russia and Ukraine serves the primary purpose of restoring economic relations between Moscow and Washington. Like Kushner and Witkoff, Dmitriev is first and foremost a businessman.

Not only does this parallel track of Russia-US economic talks explain Trump’s reluctance to put any meaningful pressure on Putin, it also betrays the deep irony of the US approach to ending the war. As Europe painfully learned over more than two decades of engagement with Putin’s Russia, economic integration does not curb the Kremlin’s expansionism but enables it.