US-mediated Russia-Ukraine talks set for Abu Dhabi next week

Moscow — The Kremlin on Tuesday confirmed that US-mediated trilateral talks between Russia and Ukraine will take place in Abu Dhabi next week, as Washington presses to end a war now in its fifth year. The announcement firms up a meeting first flagged by President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff.

"The Russian delegation will arrive on November 10-11 in Abu Dhabi to take part in trilateral talks," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, The Hindu reported. Witkoff had earlier announced the same dates, and CNA also reported that Washington will act as mediator.

Moscow's delegation will be led by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin. It is a familiar name: Medinsky, 56, a former culture minister born in Ukraine, headed Russia's team at the failed 2022 talks early in the war, and again in Istanbul last year and in Geneva earlier this year. None of those rounds produced a breakthrough. He is known for nationalistic views on Russian history and has co-authored school textbooks praising Moscow's role in Ukraine — a detail Kyiv's negotiators will not have missed.

The format follows Witkoff's meetings with both Putin and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky last month, after which all sides said three-way talks would resume in November. What Washington is now offering, in effect, is a table and a chair in each room — a mediator in the literal sense, shuttling positions between delegations rather than hosting a summit. Trump said in recent weeks that a Putin-Zelensky meeting would be set up "very soon", though no such meeting has been confirmed.

What neither announcement spells out is the agenda. The sources confirm the dates, the venue and the Russian delegation's leader; they do not say who leads for Kyiv or Washington, whether a ceasefire is formally on the table, or what happens if the two days end without agreement.

The next decision point is November 10 itself: whether the delegations arrive as billed, and whether the two days in Abu Dhabi produce anything more durable than the previous rounds Medinsky has already led.