Europe Will Join Ukraine Peace Talks in Abu Dhabi, Defying Kremlin Objections

European officials will attend U.S.-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in the United Arab Emirates this week, France's foreign minister said Sunday, days after the Kremlin insisted there could be no role for European powers. "France will be there and will ensure that Europe's voice is heard," Jean-Noël Barrot told French radio. He did not say who would represent Paris, or whether French and other European officials would take part directly in the negotiations or simply observe.

The meetings are set for Tuesday and Wednesday in Abu Dhabi and had been presented as a three-way session among Washington, Moscow and Kyiv. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had ruled out a European role, saying the trilateral format was already agreed. Speaking to a Russian news channel on Friday, he accused European governments of failing to decide who speaks for them, while acknowledging that security talks would at some point require Europe's involvement.

The dispute over the format comes as President Donald Trump has hinted at a wider deal. On Thursday, Trump met Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev and said a coming agreement was "going to involve more than Ukraine," adding that it "might involve all of Europe." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN on Friday that he had not been given details of the agreement Trump described. "For me, it's not simple, and it can be dangerous," he said, invoking the 1945 Yalta conference, where Allied leaders settled the division of Europe without the involvement of several affected countries.

This will be the fourth round of Trump administration-brokered talks between the two warring nations and the first since negotiations in Geneva in February. Earlier rounds made little progress, and the chances of a breakthrough have shrunk as the administration focused on its war with Iran. Moscow agreed to return to the table only after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg in October. That meeting produced Putin's announcement that an American prisoner would be freed from a Russian jail, an apparent gesture in response to Trump's earlier lifting of sanctions on Russian diesel exports, a move Ukraine strongly opposed because it argued the fuel sales helped replenish Moscow's war chest.

Witkoff has said the agenda will include postwar security arrangements, de-escalation of the conflict and humanitarian issues. The talks follow a limited ceasefire, helped along by Melania Trump, that allowed humanitarian aid into a town inside Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Russia's delegation will again be led by Vladimir Medinsky, a hard-line Putin aide who has taken part in most talks with Ukraine since the failed first round in March 2022. For the first time, it will also include Deputy Foreign Ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, Yury Zhigarlovsky, a deputy head of the General Staff's operations directorate, and military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov. The more senior lineup could suggest Moscow is readier to tackle thorny political and military questions, but the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, noted that some of the same officials have previously sought to slow talks or push harder on Moscow's demands.

The gaps remain wide. Russia has demanded that Ukraine give up large parts of its territory and renounce NATO membership. Zelenskyy has repeatedly insisted that any security commitments be spelled out clearly, including who would act, and how, if Russia attacked again. Some analysts expect little. John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, argued in an Atlantic Council op-ed that Putin has rejected every U.S. proposal Kyiv accepted and prefers taking part in peace talks to pursuing actual peace. "Perhaps the only outcome of the talks," he wrote, "will be to agree to another round."