Negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US begin in Abu Dhabi, the first in nine months

Representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the United States sit again at the negotiating table nine months later. The capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, hosts trilateral negotiations this Tuesday and Wednesday in which Moscow has managed to impose a discussion on the security framework of the entire European continent before achieving a truce on the front. The envoys of the European Union, the other major interested party, will await the results of their conversations in a separate room.

The negotiations began at noon in the Arab country, around nine in the morning in mainland Spain. "First we will hold a meeting with the representatives of the European Commission, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and NATO, together with the special envoys of the United States, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. We will align our positions and coordinate our steps before the trilateral negotiations with the United States and Russia," the head of Ukrainian foreign intelligence and leader of his team in Abu Dhabi, Rustem Umerov, announced on the X social network.

The Russian delegation is headed by its chief negotiator from the previous failed meetings, the former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, responsible for propaganda in school books and inexperienced in the diplomatic arts. However, this time he is accompanied by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who in 2021, months before beginning the invasion of Ukraine, gave voice to Russian demands for a new reconfiguration of European security.

"The agenda of the talks in Abu Dhabi includes the security of Russia, Ukraine and security in the region as a whole as a top priority. We welcome this approach," announced Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the eve of the meeting.

The Kremlin's goal is to tie the Ukraine war to a broader agreement on protecting the rest of the continent. Moscow's main demand is that NATO withdraw all its military infrastructure from Eastern Europe and locate its defenses in Germany, thus returning to the point before the accession of new countries after 1997.

That is, Russia's neighbors, including the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania and Finland, would lose their current umbrella and, if invaded, would be at the mercy of the good will of their allies to apply Article 5 of the NATO treaty (which provides for the support of the entire bloc when an attack occurs on one of the members).

This is the first time that this Russian demand is openly part of peace talks with Washington and kyiv. Moscow, on the other hand, refuses to make concessions regarding the protection of Ukraine.

Russia rejects any formula that would allow Ukraine, which does not belong to NATO, to activate an article similar to clauses 4 and 5 of the Alliance treaty if it is attacked again by Moscow. Likewise, the Kremlin demands to be part of the countries that guarantee Ukraine's security in the future and also have veto power.

In Russia they are not optimistic about the new negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the first with Ukraine since February. Moscow's representative at the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, has warned that Moscow will not accept any peace that does not satisfy its interests and involves "a freezing of the conflict."