The first official and direct three-way talks between the United States, Russia and Ukraine since the beginning of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 had been a rare sign of progress in an otherwise bleak start to the new year. But they ended without a breakthrough on January 24, with follow-up discussions before too long likely, but not certain.
It is hardly surprising that a peace agreement continues to elude the negotiators and mediators.
The fundamental disagreement between Moscow and Kyiv over the status of territory remains. Russia formally annexed four regions of Ukraine in September 2022 — in addition to the Crimean peninsula which it has occupied illegally since 2014 — but still does not fully control them after nearly four years of fighting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears convinced that his troops will eventually be able to capture the remaining Kyiv-controlled parts of the Donetsk region — some 5,000 square kilometres — just as they have done with almost all of the neighbouring region of Luhansk. At the current rate of Russia’s military progress, this could easily take another year; so Mr Putin would likely prefer to get his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to withdraw his forces.
Mr Zelenskyy rejects the idea of giving up any territory that Russia has not been able to take by force — not least because there is no guarantee that the Kremlin would stop there. Ukrainian public opinion is largely behind him on this. In addition, the Ukrainian president cannot simply give away territory on his own. The Ukrainian constitution requires that any such deal be approved in a referendum.
More important still are strategic considerations. Those areas in the Donbas that Ukrainian forces still hold are part of the country’s best developed defensive lines, including several so-called fortress cities. Handing these over would leave Kyiv much more exposed in the future and give Moscow an improved staging ground for renewed offensives.
This makes an agreement on post-war security guarantees all the more crucial for Ukraine. After meeting with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, at the World Economic Forum in Davos just a day before the talks in Abu Dhabi, Mr Zelenskyy said that an agreement on security guarantees from the United States had been finalised. That may be so, but it has not been officially signed as yet, making any Ukrainian concessions even more risky.
As a result of their respective calculations, neither side appears to be willing to budge.
All of this should be fairly obvious to any mediator, and it is hard to see how the American team, led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, can be blind to these facts.
If they were hoping to apply pressure on either or both sides to make concessions, their strategy has not, for now, worked.
Even in the chaotic foreign policy process of the current administration in the White House, it seems clear that American pressure on Russia is unlikely to be forthcoming in any meaningful way — and the Kremlin appears acutely aware of this.
Mr Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, made it very plain before the start of the trilateral discussions in Abu Dhabi on Friday that Russia’s demand for full control of the Donbas remained in place. Overnight, Russia then carried out another devastating strike against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which is already teetering on the brink of collapse.
In addition, Russia continues to frame its current ‘offer’ to freeze the frontlines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for full control of Donetsk as the “Anchorage formula”, a term the Kremlin uses to refer to the agreement that Mr Putin and Mr Trump apparently struck at their summit in Alaska last August.
By couching its territorial demands in terms of the “Anchorage formula”, Moscow tries to establish a fait accompli that gives the impression of a properly negotiated deal, and crucially one agreed by the American president. It flatters the dealmaker in Mr Trump, presents a potentially significant win for Mr Putin, and casts Mr Zelenskyy in the light of the unreasonable spoiler if he rejects an ‘agreement’ he had no part in negotiating.
These are not the signals of good-faith negotiations.
After more than a year of so far fruitless efforts, Mr Trump’s team also still does not seem to understand that pressure on Kyiv alone is not going to get them, or anyone else, closer to a deal. US support remains important for Ukraine and gives Washington leverage over Mr Zelenskyy, but it is no longer the only game in town.
Mr Zelenskyy’s European partners remain steadfast in their backing and are picking up their game, albeit only slowly. The fact that Europe stayed united and faced Mr Trump down over his threats to annex Greenland — if need be, by force — will also weigh positively in Mr Zelenskyy’s calculations. With an even deeper rupture in the transatlantic alliance avoided for now, Europe will be both less distracted by threats from America and more focused on becoming strategically independent from its erstwhile senior partner in Washington.
It is also not entirely clear that American mediators would be ready for an actual deal between Russia and Ukraine.
The agreement on American security guarantees Mr Zelenskyy spoke of after meeting Mr Trump in Davos still requires the leaders to sign on the dotted line. Given the way in which Mr Trump has treated America’s hitherto closest allies just over the past few weeks, one might wonder how much American security guarantees can really still be relied upon.
A deal on rebuilding Ukraine in the event of a peace agreement is also nowhere near in sight. Moscow balks at the idea of paying reparations to Kyiv and instead suggested that some US$5 billion worth of its assets that are currently frozen in the United States should be used for the reconstruction of the Ukrainian territories that the Kremlin has illegally occupied. This is clearly a non-starter for Kyiv and Brussels alike.
The fact that all sides agreed in Abu Dhabi that they will continue their discussions is undoubtedly positive. But whether this implies that an actual negotiation process will now get under way and what its format and direction will be, no one knows. And thus, as Ukrainians continue to suffer through a very harsh winter, a ceasefire, let alone a peace agreement, seem as out of reach as ever.
An earlier version of this analysis was published by Channel News Asia on January 27, 2026.
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