Talks on the war in Ukraine will begin Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, but Russia has already scored a strategic success, The Washington Post wrote on Monday. According to the paper, Moscow has prodded the U.S. into opening a broader discussion on European security.
The meeting in the capital of the United Arab Emirates gives President Donald Trump his first opportunity to bolster his standing as a global power broker after the Republicans’ painful defeat in the congressional elections, the Washington daily wrote.
It appears, however, that U.S. negotiators, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are giving ground to Moscow, the Post wrote. The paper cited Western and Russian officials and analysts, according to whom Moscow has managed to persuade the Trump administration to back a proposal to create a new framework for a “broader European security architecture” as part of a Russia-Ukraine peace deal.
The Post wrote that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has long sought to portray the 2022 invasion of Ukraine as a response to what he described as a threat to Russia’s security posed by NATO’s eastward expansion, as well as to the alleged persecution of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, a claim raised by Moscow. The United States and its allies have rejected those claims as untrue.
The paper’s sources noted that opening a discussion on this topic could give the impression that the Trump administration supports the Kremlin’s position. In their view, it also carries the risk of giving Russia greater influence over European security issues, even though Moscow undermined previous agreements by seeking to change borders by force. The Post also recalled the position of European countries that Russia must first end its war against Ukraine before any talks on European security can even be considered.
According to the paper, the opening of the talks also signals the “growing desperation of the Trump administration, which is trying to restart talks with Russia on Ukraine after months of no progress whatsoever, and as the United States becomes entangled in a war with Iran.” The Post stressed that European officials, who fear the U.S. will hold such talks over their heads, are insisting that representatives of their countries also take part in the negotiations in Abu Dhabi.
During a conference call on Monday, U.S. officials said they want subsequent rounds of talks to be held in a multilateral format, with European representatives taking part. The U.S. authorities stress that they want to be able to hold talks on ending the fighting and on the postwar security order in Europe in parallel. Washington’s representatives said that during Witkoff’s most recent visit to St. Petersburg, Putin reacted “with enthusiasm” to the proposal to begin talks on a postwar “security architecture.”
The U.S. administration revealed that its representatives asked Russia to agree to security guarantees for Ukraine modeled on Articles 4 and 5 of NATO’s founding treaty (Article 5 is the alliance’s collective defense clause, which provides that an attack on one member of the organization is an attack on all and entails an armed response – PAP), and that the alliance itself would provide similar guarantees.
From Washington, Natalia Dziurdzińska (PAP)
