The NATO-Russia Ukrainian War Abu Dahbi Peace Talks
Moderate Optimism Is Suggested
By Gordon Hahn
Feb 04, 2026
∙ Paid
The Abu Dahbi process – the first trilateral negotiations on ending the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War have signaled progress towards that goal, but the progress should n ot be overstated. The first success is the humanization of the meetings themselves. Official reports from the parties speak of productive, constructive, and some progress. The second success is the noted ‘progress’, meaning a nearing of the parties’ positions on one or more issue. All this amounts to modest movement towards an end to the war that should neither be overstated nor understated.
The Abu Dhabi atmospherics have moved beyond the cold, antagonistic character of many previous meetings and the general hatred characteristic of Russian-Ukrainian relations and signals from the countries’ respective leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin and especially Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy.
Beyond the success of conveing the first direct trilateral meetings, incuding direct Russian-Ukrainian talks to dicuss all the issues surrounding the war, the atmospherics were described by unidentified US officials as ‘very good’; there was mutual respect and no yelling. One exclaimed there was a moment when they all looked like friends, sparking a “feeling of hope” in the official. Another US officials said things went as good as one could expect. Additionaly, it was reported that the sides lunched together in a good atmosphere.
All sides reported very constructive, productive meetings. The importance of this for the general situation was underscored when after the Abu Dahbi 1 in January, Putin agreed to an ‘energy truce’—an agreement that both sides would refrain from targeting energy infrastructure for a week – and Russian negotiators apologized to their Ukrainian counterparts for attacks on Odessa and a passenger train, saying the troops who undertook them had still not rteceived the order to cease fire.
Abu Dhabi 1 exhibited a sign of a new seriousness, as the sides broke into working groups to hammer out the details on separate problems. On what really matters, progress on the vexing issues, progress was noted on only one issue. It was reported that the positions of Russia and Ukraine had neared on the territorial issue.
However, when one unpacks the ‘progress’, little is actually evident. Supposedly, there had been some agreement on western Donetsk, involving a compromise on Russia’s full absorption of the area along with the rest of Donetsk—one of the Ukrainian regions, besides Crimea, that Russia claims in addition to Luhansk (fully taken by Russian troops), Zaporozhe and Kherson (some 60 percent taken by Russian troops).
The specific movement in positions reported bode ill for a real agreement: parts od eastern Donetsk would be designated a ‘demilitarized zone’ and would be occupied by neutral troops (presumably non-NATO, non-CSTO, non-SCO, non-Brics countries’ troops). The issue of sovereignty over that territory remained unmentioned in the reports. Russia will not accept such an arrangement, even if Russian sovereignty is recognized unofficially or even officially, except perhaps should Ukraine sign a treaty recongnizing Russian sovereignty there.
But this seems pointless, since Russia would continue to demand full, perhaos officially recognized sovereignty over the other three regions. Zelenskiy repeatedly stated after these reports emerged that Ukraine will not cede territory to Moscow and that a “compromise must be found,” hinting at the reported demilitarized zone concept.
I have my doubts that territorial compromise can be achieved at least any time soon. The more likely outcome is a territorial fait accomli, resulting from Moscow’s seizure of all the terrirories it claims or so nearly so that it would be able trade other territories it has seized outside the four claimeed regions for the latter. The difficulty in achieving an agreement is that each side has strong incentives not to make concessions.
Moscow, as just noted, is on the march and can achieve its territorial goals – which are used mostly as a means for destroying the Ukrainian army and regime – by fait accompli on the ground. In order to concede territory it claims to Kiev, Russian would need to re-amend the constitution; this is not a major problem but an additional annoyance Putin does not need. It would require expending political capital to the far right.
As Moscow advances, Zelenskiy uses what is his only playing card. He can cede territory in return for the survival of the Ukrainian army, regime, and state. He can get back territories in regions Russia does not claim but has taken. It is taking more by the day, and ceding parts of the three partially conquered regions can allow him to recuperate the unclaimed territories taken and soon to be taken. He can also play this card on the issue of the Zaporozhe nuclear power plant, which leaks hav it that Russia is willing to share energy output on a 50-50 basis if not return the plant itself to Ukraine.
Other issues that Zelenskiy could use any such territorial concessions are the size of a postwar Ukrainian army and reconstruction financing. On the former issue Russia will not allow more than 200-300,000, while Ukraine and Europe have demanded 800,000. On the latter issue, territorial concessions might help garner some reconstruction assistance from Moscow in the form of donating a portion of frozen Russian assets in exchange for the return of the remainder of the assets to Moscow.
However, no progress was reported on any of these issues, and the idea of a trade between claimed but unconquered and unclaimed but conquered territories has never appeared in any reports about the contents of these peace talks.
The main stumbling block on Kiev’s path to territorial concessions is the virulent opposition of such a compromise on the part of the ultranationalist and neofascist elements to any sych compromise. Azov, Right Sector, C14, and others oppose this. Azov now has a trump card in Ukrainian politics. Its founder and leader, Andriy Biletskiy, heads a 20,000-strong Azov Third Army Corps, upgraded from a battalion last year, and is now a Brigadier General, a rank he was promoted to last year. In addition, a recent poll shows Biletskiy becoming a popular leader—the sixth most popular leader in Ukraine with the lowest negative rating (https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-azovs-gen-andriy-biletskiy?r=1qt5jg).
Moreover, centrists and approximately half of the population is opposed to territorial concessions. Former President Petro Poroshenko and his relatively moderate EuroSolidarity party oppose territorial concessions. The general population is approximately split evenly on the question, according to the most recent opinion poll (https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2026/02/02/8019005/). Ukraine’s most popular figure, former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and now Ukrainian ambassador to London, Valeroy Zaluzhniy.
In this context, any demilitarized zone in parts of Russian claimed Donetsk or any of the other three claimed regions would allow to slightly minimize outrage by claiming that Moscow did not gain all the territory it sought. This will serve the larger claim that ‘Ukraine won’ the war based on the falsehood that Putin sought to seize all of Ukraine when he began his SMO in February 2022.
Assuming a territorial compromise is being discussed along the noted or other lines, Ukraine’s willingness to talk seriously and even cede large parts of the claimed four regions to Moscow that the discussion of the small, demilitarized zone presupposes are likely the results of the dire circumstances Kiev finds itself in. Kiev’s defense lines and army are collapsing, with Ukraine’s increasingly gerontocratc army in constant retreat, permitting the Russian’s ubiquitous advance to accelerate. The country’s electricity gird is on the verge of complete destruction and incapacity, with large territories under almost complete blackout for almost the entire day. This is compromising the water supply and threatening society and the economy with complete collapse.
The country’s oligarchic-neofascist Maidan is riven with divisions and delegitizing under the weight of massive corruption scandals surrounding Zelenskiy’s inner circle and political party. Zelenskiy has been forced to fire many of his most trusted officials to rid himself of the issue, making him even more reliant on criminal and neofascist elements. The catastrophe on the war front and in the rear perhaps is concentrating Zelenskiy’s mind to search for an exit ramp and create several potential ones: flight, elections, signing a peace treaty.
This is not extraordinary. Zelsnkiy has been gradually conceding certain positions, as Ukraine’s ruin deepens. Recall that Zelenskiy refused for years to engage Moscow in talks, and even issues a decree prohibiting any Ukrainian citizen from negotiating with the Russians as long as Putin remained in power. Maybe this is one motivation for Kiev’s desparate attempts to assassinate Putin by droning the Kremlin and, more recently, his Valdai residence.
Now, his associates are negotiating, and Zelenskiy is pushing for a meeting with Putin himself. Also recall that for the longest time, Kiev rejected the idea of a ceasefire but then became the chief champion of the idea. Then after insisting on a ceasefire, it is now negotiating a full-fledged agreement, though it is surely trying finagle a ceasefire by among other things declaring plans to hold a referendum on any peace plan, something that would require a ceasefire to conduct.
The recent energy truce is evidence that of Kiev’s dire straits and some movement beyond the ‘new atmosphere.’ It is in part a good will gesture by Moscow requested or somehow induced by US President Donald Trump to help extract territorial concessions from Zelenskiy. The truce benefitted Ukraine much more than Russia, given the near end of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure resulting from relentless targeting by Moscow. This is not the first such gesture from Moscow.
In March 2022, Putin withdrew Russian forces from north of Kiev as peace talks took place. Putin’s coercive diplomacy, aka ‘specail military opertation (SMO), was scuttled by the West’s intervention by way of refusing security guarantees the Russo-Ukrainian Istanbul agreement envisoned and promising weapons and financial assistance to Kiev ‘for as long as it takes.’
The truce has not been welcomed by Russian hardliners but any poitical capital Putin may have expended will be recuperated in the truce’s wake, which will see probably an unprecedentedly massive, knock out attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That is likely to coincide with a deatly freeze in Ukraine down to perhaps as low as -30C.
The idea of introducing neutral peacekeepers into some demilitarized zone intersects with the issue of security guarantees for wich Zelenskiy is pressing so hard. There are two but unifiable possibilities apparently under discussion. First, Washington and Ukraine are discussing some bilateral arrangement involving unilateral US guarantees. Second would be a trilateral arrangement in whch the US would guarantee the security of European troops stationed in Ukraine after a peace is secured. The first is politically impossible, despite what Zelenskiy seems to think and despite what Trump may be leading him on to believe.
Thus, Zelenskiy asserts a US-Ukrainian security guarantee agreement is complete and ready for sighing, and the US makes no comment whatsoever. The same goes for the second option. Neither one will be accepted by Moscow, so the discussions are useless. Moreover, the attempts by Kiev and Brussels to draw the US into such an agreement are a trap designed to draw the US into a conflict with Russia in the hope that the prospect will force Putin to make compromises or that the event itself will lead to Russia’s strategic defeat. Once Western troops are in Ukraine as peacekeepers a Ukrainian provocation will be used to draw Western and Russian troops into confict.
Both plots are the products of minds in Kiev, Brussels, and elsewhere in Europe that put an imagined world of globalist triumph and European glory ahead of the real world in their calculations and strategies. Zelenskiy has been trying to draw the US and NATO into the war directly ever since they connived to prompt him to abandon a peace agreement with Moscow.
Numerous Ukrainian fakes have been conjured to achieve this goal: Russian bombing a maternity ward, Russian bombing of children’s theater, Russian bombing of the Zaporozhe nuclear power plant its troops hold, etc., etc. Putin will not accept any treaty proposed by the West that allows for Western troops or military equipment in Ukraine in any guise whatsoever. The SMO was begun to prevent this prospect either by diplomacy or war.
The political and military correlation forces, balance of power forces Zelenskiy to simulate peacemaking, negotiations, and good will for as long as his troops can keep the Russians out of Kiev and away from the Dneiper River. His participation in talks is a stalling tactic with the option of real engagement once there is no choice. Thus, he proposes a referendum to approve any peace treaty. The treaty negotiation process can be dragged out, and then a referendum can be held. The referendum’s conduct will require a ceasefire – more time.
More recently, Zelenskiy has introduced a new stalling tactic. He is demanding Ukraine’s accession to the EU in 2027. This issue can draw in the equally obstructionist European leaders into Trump’s peace process. Ideally for Kiev, the process can be prolonged until Trump leaves the Oval Office and new Ukraine-friendly US president enters onto the stage, US-Russian rapprochement is ended, and arms and other fornms of US and Western assistance are regenerated.
Returning to the present moment, neither great optimism nor dismissive pessimism is appropriate for the Abu Dhabi process. Modest, cautious optimism on the trilateral peace process is in order. Time and attrition will either cure the misguided minds or sweep them off the stage in Ukraine, so long as they do not throw the entire chess board over through some apocalyptical provocation.