Russia, Ukraine and the US have met for a second time in as many weeks to discuss a possible cessation of hostilities. The meeting got off to the same familiar and depressing start as the first one: on February 3, the night before the three sides gathered in Abu Dhabi, Russia launched a massive barrage of 521 drones and cruise missiles, once again targeting critical civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv. And while the talks were in full swing, Russia followed up on its nighttime strikes by deploying cluster munitions against a market in Druzhkivka, one of the embattled cities in what remains of Ukraine’s fortress belt in the Donetsk region.
This was clearly not the most auspicious start to talks aimed at stopping the fighting that has now lasted almost four years.
Add to that the fact that the basic negotiating positions of Moscow and Kyiv remain as far apart as ever, and any hopes for an imminent breakthrough to peace in Ukraine quickly evaporate.
The more technical discussions on military issues, including specifics of a ceasefire and how it would be monitored, appear to be generally more constructive. Apart from a prisoner exchange, however, no further agreement was reached. But even such small confidence-building steps are useful. And even where no deal is feasible for now, identifying likely issues and mapping solutions that are potentially acceptable to both Moscow and Kyiv is important preparatory work for a future settlement.
Without a breakthrough on political issues, however, it does not get the conflict parties closer to a peace deal. These political issues remain centred on the question of territory. The Kremlin insists on the so-called “Anchorage formula” according to which Ukraine withdraws from those areas of Donetsk it still controls and Russia agrees to freezing the frontlines elsewhere.
Kyiv has repeatedly made clear that this is unacceptable. US mediation efforts, to date, have been unable to break the resulting deadlock.
The political impasse, however, clearly extends beyond territory.
Without naming any specific blockages to a deal, Yury Ushakov, a key advisor to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, recently noted that there were other contested issues holding up agreement. Very likely among them are the security guarantees that Ukraine has been demanding to make sure that Russia will not renege on a settlement.
These future security guarantees appear to have been agreed between Kyiv and its European and American partners. They involve a gradually escalating response to Russian ceasefire violations, ultimately leading to direct European and US military involvement.
The Kremlin’s opposition to such an arrangement is hardly surprising. But it casts further doubt on how sincere Putin is about a durable peace agreement with Ukraine. In turn, it explains Kyiv’s reluctance to make any concessions, let alone those on the current scale of Russian demands.
What complicates these discussions further is the fact that the US is linking the provision of security guarantees for Kyiv to Ukrainian concessions on territory along the lines of the Moscow-endorsed Anchorage formula.
This might seem a sensible and fair compromise, but there are some obvious problems with it. First, it relies on the dependability of the US as an ultimate security backstop. But confidence, especially in Kyiv and other European capitals, in how dependable US pledges actually are, has been severely eroded during the first 12 months of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.
Second, Europe is moving painfully slowly to fill this confidence gap and the additional void left by the US decision to halt funding to Ukraine. The details of a €90 billion loan agreed in principle by EU leaders in December, have only just been finalised. It will take yet more time for money to be available and to be used, including for essential arms purchases for Kyiv.
Doubts — as voiced by Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte — also persist about whether, even in the long term, Europe will be able to develop sufficient and sufficiently independent military capabilities outside the transatlantic alliance.
As a result, there are few incentives for Kyiv to bow to US pressure and give up more territory to Russia in exchange for security guarantees that may not be as ironclad in reality as they appear on paper. Likewise, it makes little sense for Moscow to agree even to a hypothetical western security guarantee for Ukraine, which could thwart future Russian expansionism, in exchange for territory that the Kremlin remains confident it can take by force if necessary.
Russia will feel further reassured in its assumption that it can outlast Ukraine on the battlefield and at the negotiation table by developments in both Washington and Beijing.
In the US capital, there is still no progress on a new sanctions bill which has been languishing in the US senate since last spring, and which was allegedly “greenlit” by the White House four weeks ago. In addition, Trump’s top Ukraine negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — are now also engaged in negotiations with Iran. This further diminishes already sparse American diplomatic capacity and the ability to devote the time, resources and dogged determination likely required to pull off a deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Following Xi Jinping’s public affirmation of Chinese support for Russia in a video call between the two countries’ presidents on the anniversary of the declaration of their “no-limits partnership” in February 2022, Putin is unlikely to feel any real pressure to change his position from Beijing either.
With Russia’s intransigence thus reinforced and Ukrainian fears to be sold down the river by one of its key allies further entrenched, any claims of progress in the negotiations in Abu Dhabi are therefore at best over-optimistic and at worst self-deluding.
Given that such claims currently come prominently from Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, this once more underscores that US mediation between Russia and Ukraine serves the primary purpose of restoring economic relations between Moscow and Washington. Like Kushner and Witkoff, and ultimately Trump himself, Dmitriev is first and foremost a businessman.
This parallel track of Russia-US economic talks explains Trump’s reluctance to put any meaningful pressure on Moscow. More importantly, however, it also betrays the deep irony of the US approach to ending the war. As Europe painfully learned over more than two decades of engagement with Putin’s Russia, economic integration does not curb the Kremlin’s expansionism. It enables it.
An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on February 5, 2026.
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