Wire reporting: (AFP, via CNA)

Negotiators from the United States, Russia and Ukraine are meeting in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday for two days of talks on the war, the first trilateral session since February^1,2,3.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are leading the American side^3,4. Russia's team is headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky and includes Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, attending for the first time, and senior military officer Yuri Zhigarlovsky². Ukraine's delegation is led by Rustem Umerov².

European officials from France, Germany, the European Commission and others are in Abu Dhabi but Russia has said it does not want them in the negotiations^2,3. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the meeting as trilateral, with Europeans coordinating through Washington and Kyiv³. Ukrainian delegates plan separate briefings for European allies².

Meduza, citing European Pravda, said EU commission and council chiefs of staff, national security advisers from Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and NATO chief of staff Geoffrey van Leeuwen are expected on the sidelines³. Umerov said Kyiv is working to keep Europe in the diplomatic process².

President Donald Trump said last week that a peace deal could emerge soon and that it might involve more than Ukraine, including Europe². Some European officials said any talks on European security needed governments at the table and that Russia should not set European security policy². French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Europeans had told the U.S. mediator that talks on the continent's future cannot ignore their demands³.

Trump has also said Ukraine would end up with a different shape¹. Publicly, there has been no sign that President Vladimir Putin has dropped his demand that Ukraine cede all of Donbas². President Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to hand over land his forces still hold².

On the eve of the talks, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were strengthening Kyiv's negotiating position and that Russia was taking record losses, a claim Moscow disputes². A U.S. official told Reuters that Washington believes both leaders might accept some territorial compromise; a senior Ukrainian official denied that Kyiv would consider such concessions and said territory could be discussed only at leaders' level with security guarantees^2,6.

A U.S.-announced truce on energy strikes last month quickly collapsed; Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil refineries and Russia has struck Ukrainian power systems and cities². Kyiv said 55 people were killed in a strike on a frontline village as they waited for aid^1,4.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, traveling to a G7 meeting in France, said there had been advances on what post-conflict security architecture could look like, with nothing finalized^2,3. What, if anything, the Abu Dhabi round produces remains unknown^2,3.