Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he expects the next round of trilateral talks with Russia and the United States to take place by November 10, with Abu Dhabi as the planned venue.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten in The Hague on October 28, Zelensky said preparations for the meeting were under way and that Kyiv was waiting for Washington to confirm a date.
He said he hoped the talks would be held between November 6 and 10, once the US midterm elections on November 3 were out of the way. “After November 4, we will have a date,” he said.
The Ukrainian leader left open the possibility of moving the meeting from the capital of the United Arab Emirates because of what he called sensitive moments in the Middle East, although he said the dates should not change.
Zelensky said the talks would be held at the level of negotiating teams rather than heads of state. He added that he did not know when a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin might take place, saying that depended on Moscow.
He said the most delicate questions in the negotiating process, including territory and security guarantees for Ukraine, could only be settled by the leaders themselves.
Ukraine, Russia and the US held two rounds of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi in January and February this year under US mediation, without reaching agreement on territorial issues. The format has since stalled.
The Kremlin confirmed that negotiations with Washington and Kyiv would not resume before November 4, a public holiday in Russia. Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian state television that Moscow was ready to return to the table after that date but did not expect substantial results from a first, exploratory session.
Ushakov has also said that Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who telephoned Putin on October 27, were not acting as representatives of Europe in the process, according to Russian news agency Interfax.
Stubb’s office said the two leaders had spoken as heads of their respective countries and not on behalf of Europe as a whole. The call followed talks in Oslo on October 20 between Zelensky, Stubb, Støre and US special envoy Steve Witkoff, after which Witkoff travelled to St Petersburg to brief Putin.
Zelensky said he and Jetten had discussed how European partners could ensure their positions were taken into account in a format that does not include them. He also said Kyiv wanted the Abu Dhabi meeting to take place before any talks between the US, China and Russia.
