European negotiators will join the next round of talks with Russia, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US envoy Jared Kushner said on Thursday, in the clearest sign yet that Europe will have a seat at the table in the American-led effort to end the war in Ukraine.
The announcement came after a packed day of shuttle diplomacy following the US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi, the first trilateral negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the United States in nine months. US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held more than four hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin before flying to Dublin to debrief Zelenskyy.
Speaking to journalists on the tarmac of a military airbase in Ireland, Zelenskyy insisted that Europeans would take part in the next round rather than remain on the sidelines as they were in Abu Dhabi. "They will have a voice," he said, calling it important that the process had resumed after months of stalemate.
Kushner said the expansion of the next round of talks to include European partners would allow the tackling of broader post-war European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Russia and Ukraine. He added that Washington was working towards what would be the largest prisoner exchange of the war, potentially reuniting thousands of people with their families.
The main breakthrough in Abu Dhabi, highlighted by both Kyiv and Washington, was an agreement on a large-scale prisoner exchange, though the talks ended without a breakthrough on ending the war itself. The two sides have said major differences remain, particularly on territory.
Putin, for his part, indicated that Moscow would not compromise on its hardline demands. He told the two US envoys he would not water down demands to control parts of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed, ruled out agreeing to foreign peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, and rejected talk of a possible territorial settlement involving demilitarised "grey" zones between Ukrainian and Russian positions.
An EU official said representatives of five European capitals as well as the European Commission also met the US envoys, and that a new multilateral meeting "will be fixed soon". The Kremlin, however, did not confirm that Putin had agreed to include Europe in future talks, which Kyiv and its allies have long been seeking.
Russia has seized swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022, in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Moscow has formally annexed four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia — despite not having full control over them, annexations rejected by Kyiv and the West as illegal. Russia currently holds about a fifth of Ukraine, and Kyiv refuses to give up the rest of its eastern Donbas region.
European countries have been rattled by Russia pushing a review of the entire continent's security architecture, with the United States also floating a new framework. For European capitals, a seat at the table is not only about Ukraine's future but about the shape of European security for years to come.
Whether the next round produces more than the last remains an open question. The Abu Dhabi talks showed that prisoner exchanges, where both sides have something to gain, can move forward even while the central questions of territory and security guarantees stay unresolved. The test now is whether adding European voices to the room can turn a narrow humanitarian deal into the beginnings of a wider settlement.
