U.S. demands a seat for Europe at Ukraine peace talks

European governments’ long-running and sometimes bad-tempered debate over who should represent them in Ukraine peace talks just became urgent.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff will press the case for Europe to have a direct role in future talks as they mediate the first trilateral discussion with Russia and Ukraine since February in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.

European governments and EU institutions will likely not have long to decide who they want at the negotiating table on their behalf.

Kushner and Witkoff want to step up the pace of the talks and for this week’s meeting to be the last without Europe’s full participation.

U.S. and European officials meet in Abu Dhabi

The U.S. officials welcomed the fact that the leaders of Finland and Norway called Russia’s Vladimir Putin directly on Oct. 27 and said more outreach is necessary.

The question of who speaks for Europe — and whether Ukraine’s European allies should even be speaking to Putin at all — has been deeply divisive.

EU leaders will discuss the topic at an informal summit in Dublin later this week.

Senior European officials are due in Abu Dhabi for the meetings this week but, although Kushner and Witkoff are expected to consult them, they will not be involved in the main negotiations due to Russian objections.

Those present include security advisers from the U.K., Germany, France, as well as officials from Italy, NATO, the European Commission and European Council.

Agenda for the talks

The U.S. officials said Day 1 of the talks would focus on security guarantees for Ukraine and the potential reshaping of the security architecture of Europe.

Day 2 would look at territorial issues — where the borders and boundaries should be drawn — and other questions.

European governments fear that Trump may be preparing to agree to longstanding demands from Putin to roll back NATO’s influence in the region.

But the U.S. officials insisted that NATO would still be central to Europe’s collective defense, while refusing to back away from the need for a fundamental rethink of the continent’s relations with Russia.

Europeans have a lot of baggage about redrawing the security architecture because Russia had proposed various changes in the past and previous arrangements had failed.

We have to build something new that works today.

Territorial and security issues

On the most difficult question of all for Ukraine — the fate of Russian-occupied territory — both sides have shown flexibility in private, the officials said.

The aim of this week’s talks is to keep up the momentum of recent weeks, rather than to deliver a final ceasefire, they added.

But the two main tracks in the talks — territory and future security arrangements for Ukraine and Europe — must run together and be resolved together, the U.S. side said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had been heavily involved in the discussions with the U.S. administration and in sharing ideas for reforms.