Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meet in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday for two days of US-brokered talks, their first direct meeting in that format since February, as President Donald Trump steps up his push to end the four-and-a-half-year war.

The talks, mediated by Washington, are being led on the American side by special envoy Steve Witkoff and negotiator Jared Kushner. European powers, including France and Germany, are sending officials to Abu Dhabi, but Russia has made clear it does not want the Europeans at the negotiating table; Ukrainian delegates will instead brief their European allies separately on how the discussions are going.

Ahead of the meeting, a US official briefing reporters said both Russia and Ukraine were showing some flexibility in private on the possible exchange of territory — even though both sides have been adamant in public. Ukraine wants Russian forces pushed back to the borders that existed before the war, while President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to hand over all of the Donbas region in the east. Russia currently holds about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

The hardest question, left for last

The US official said any territorial agreement would probably come only at the end of the negotiations, once other issues — above all a post-war security architecture for Ukraine — have been settled. Security guarantees are expected to dominate the talks, including the possibility of a NATO-style Article 5 defence commitment for Kyiv.

Under the framework Washington has sketched, Ukraine would get an end to the war, security guarantees and a roadmap to European Union membership. A senior Ukrainian official, however, strongly denied that Kyiv would consider territorial concessions, saying the issue could be discussed only at leaders' level and only in the context of appropriate security guarantees. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly refused to hand over land his forces have died defending, and there has been no public sign that Mr Putin is willing to drop his demand for the whole of the Donbas.

A wider deal?

Mr Trump suggested last week that a broad peace deal was possible and could incorporate the security of Europe as a whole. The US official said the American envoys could travel to Russia after the Abu Dhabi talks to meet Mr Putin. The Russian delegation is again headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky and, for the first time, includes Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

Expectations for a breakthrough in two days are low. The gap between the two sides' stated positions remains wide, and the talks are expected to focus first on more immediate steps — including a ceasefire and monitoring arrangements — before the hardest questions are reached. But the fact that all three parties are back in the same room, after months in which diplomacy had stalled, is itself the most significant development in the war's diplomacy this year.