Russia and Ukraine will resume negotiations next week, after nine months

MoscowAfter nine months, tens of thousands of dead soldiers, nearly 3,000 civilian casualties, and more than 150,000 drones and 1,500 missiles launched, Russia and Ukraine will sit down again to discuss the end of the war. The US attack on Iran interrupted the last round of talks in mid-February, and since then, the conflict has only escalated, stuck at the front and increasingly destructive in the cities. The new momentum of a campaigning Donald Trump has dragged Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11, in a meeting that Volodymyr Zelensky would like to see result in a truce regarding energy infrastructure and the Black Sea, but from which no major progress is expected.

The reappointment of Vladimir Medinsky, a defender of Russian imperialism and the architect of patriotic education, as head of the Russian delegation suggests that Moscow's political approach will not present major changes. During these nine months, the Kremlin's position has remained unchanged. It continues to demand that the Ukrainian army withdraw from the entire Donbas as a precondition for discussing a peace agreement. This was and promises to continue to be the main obstacle to any understanding, given that Putin is convinced that the conquest of the entire Donetsk region is a matter of months.

The situation in Ukraine's rear, however, has recently worsened. The shortage of interceptor missiles has made it even more vulnerable to Russian attacks, which, in addition to ballistic missiles, have incorporated jet drones, which are much faster and harder to shoot down. This weakness on the eve of winter is pushing Zelensky to press, at the very least, for a ceasefire that would protect the Ukrainian electrical system, which is severely battered after almost five years of war, and that would rehabilitate grain trade through the Black Sea. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has responded by recalling the Russian mantra: “We do not want a temporary truce, but a lasting peace that eliminates the root causes of the conflict”.

Putin intends to take advantage of this to weaken Kyiv's negotiating position. Furthermore, unlike in February, the interests of Washington and Moscow have once again converged following the agreement for the export of Russian diesel and the promise of new joint ventures. And, meanwhile, Trump has once again echoed the Kremlin's arguments regarding the need to remove Zelensky and has unsuccessfully sought an end to Ukrainian bombings of Russian refineries.

Something is moving

However, although major commitments seem far off, there are small signs that something is moving. The other major point of contention between the parties is the omnipresent security guarantees that Kyiv is demanding to avoid a new Russian invasion, which the United States has already confirmed will be put on the table. Until now, Russia had also asked Ukraine to offer reciprocal guarantees, an issue that Zelensky was not willing to grant, but which, recently, for the first time, he has opened up to debating. A difficult fit to imagine, since the Ukrainian leader does not want to renounce NATO military assistance nor the size of his army.

The Kremlin has also shown itself more predisposed to talk with Europe following Putin's call with the leaders of Finland and Norway, aware that Brussels is an indispensable interlocutor in the so-called post-war security architecture on the continent. Even so, faced with the attempts of European leaders to be present in Abu Dhabi, Moscow has been categorical and has insisted that these are trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.

Russian spokespersons have also ruled out for the umpteenth time a summit between Putin and Zelensky to try to unblock the most delicate points of disagreement, while the Ukrainian leader has rejected a possible call between the two. “It will be a very formal and dry phone conversation, where I will hear a historical lecture from the Russian leader again, instead of real steps to actually end the war,” he said.

One of the plausible results of the trilateral format could be a new prisoner exchange. The ceasefire last week in the occupied city of Oleshky, in Kherson, which allowed the evacuation of hundreds of people, has shown that cooperation between both sides is possible for humanitarian issues. It has also made it clear that the conditions for a truce are there. In fact, this type of progress is one of the few tangible results of the previous round of talks, when it was the military who took the lead in the negotiations.