France says Europe joins US-mediated Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi

Paris — France will take part in the US-mediated talks on ending the Ukraine war opening in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Sunday, insisting that Europe's voice will be heard in a process Washington had framed until now as trilateral: Ukraine, Russia and the United States.

"The Europeans will be represented and France will be in Abu Dhabi to participate in these talks," Barrot told RTL radio, France 24 reported. Past discussions, he said, had sometimes included the Europeans and sometimes not, but "this time they will participate". "France will be there and will ensure that Europe's voice is heard."

The announcement matters because the guest list had been contested. The talks on Tuesday and Wednesday, at officials' level rather than leaders', had been presented as a three-way format, and the identities of the participants have not been made public. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants European allies involved; Russia has suggested there would be no place for them at the table, according to The Hindu.

Barrot's comments followed remarks by President Donald Trump predicting a "very big" deal with Russia covering not only the Ukraine war but "all of Europe" — language that, in European capitals, revived fears of a Washington pivot toward the Kremlin. Trump's envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, joined a preparatory meeting of US, European, Ukrainian and NATO officials in Brussels on Thursday by videolink, saying Washington was working on "a broader European security architecture that can help establish the conditions for lasting peace".

That phrase is precisely the one European governments have spent years rejecting. Before launching the war in 2022, Moscow delivered an ultimatum to NATO demanding that alliance troops be withdrawn from eastern Europe; the alliance refused. A NATO spokeswoman said the Brussels meeting "sought to advance a just and sustainable end to the war in Ukraine", which is the sort of formulation that commits nobody to anything.

Kushner said Washington would "consult closely with our European partners on the sidelines" in Abu Dhabi and, "if progress is made", move toward a broader multilateral format. The next marker is therefore Tuesday's opening session: whether European officials sit inside the room, as Paris now says they will, or merely in the corridor, as Moscow would prefer.