"The scariest thing that's happened over the past six months is that the war has started controlling the warring parties rather than the parties controlling it. It has to be brought back under control somehow."
A Ukrainska Pravda source involved in organising the negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war repeated this thought several times during our conversation.
The fighting has become so all-encompassing that both the warring parties and their allies, who are not directly involved on the battlefield, are increasingly adapting to developments on the front lines instead of determining the course of events themselves.
With a new round of peace talks getting underway, Ukraine is trying to change this course of history.
The previous round of negotiations in the first half of 2026 focused on the idea of "Donnyland" – a demilitarised zone in Donbas.
A senior figure in Ukraine's current government sums up the last round of talks succinctly: "Everyone was jumping through hoops over troop withdrawals, administrations, American involvement in governance and all sorts of things like that. But when it came to the question of whose flag would fly over the entrance to this 'Donnyland', Putin said it would be the Russian one. Our side said, 'Anything but yours.' And the whole thing fell apart over that question."
So Ukraine's objective now is not simply to resume the trilateral talks that Russia has blocked. Kyiv wants to use the new round of diplomacy to move the discussion away from Moscow's narrow and intractable territorial demands towards a broader issue: the future security architecture of Ukraine and Europe in the "post-Donbas" era.
The Ukrainian side's thinking is that within such a framework, the question of Donbas could cease to be the central subject of the negotiations and become part of a much broader agreement.
But first, the simplest and at the same time most difficult task had to be accomplished: getting the Russians back to the negotiating table.
It was to accomplish this mission that the American negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, travelled to meet Vladimir Putin on several occasions. And during Witkoff's latest trip to St Petersburg, immediately after his conversation with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Oslo, the process unexpectedly got moving again.
Why did Putin listen to Witkoff? What should we expect from the new talks? And why are Ukraine and the US pushing for the first negotiating session to be held at least a week earlier than the 10 November period announced by Putin? Ukrainska Pravda has been exploring these questions.
Every week counts: back to the negotiating table
The new round of three-way talks between Ukraine, the US and Russia is set to take place in Abu Dhabi. The original dates announced by the Russians were, as already mentioned, in the week of 10 November – a week after the US midterm congressional elections.
However, Ukrainska Pravda has learned that Kyiv and Washington are now trying to persuade the Russians to agree to meet at least a week earlier.
The Americans did not immediately understand why the Ukrainian team was insisting on bringing the meeting forward.
"They ask, 'What difference does a week either way make to you?' And our people explain that right now, that week makes no difference. But come December, every week will matter. When you have no electricity, water or heating, every day counts," a source in Zelenskyy's team told UP.
As of the evening of 25 October, Moscow had yet to give final confirmation that the date would be brought forward.
But the very fact that the Russians are coming back to the negotiating table is seen by Ukraine as the minimum required outcome of the US representatives' latest engagement with Putin.
"We agreed with Witkoff on exactly what we would consider a success story from his visit to Putin," said a source in Zelenskyy's diplomatic team. "The main objective was to unlock the trilateral format. Previously, the Russians had sent unequivocal signals that they saw no possibility of any negotiations before the end of winter."
Kyiv is not expecting the very first meeting to deliver a breakthrough. On the contrary, Ukraine's negotiating team believes that it will take at least several rounds of talks to produce substantive agreements.
"Ideally, if there were a genuine willingness, the whole arrangement could be wrapped up before the New Year. But the Russians are unlikely to agree. They believe they can wear us down this winter," a source in the President's Office told UP.
However, in an optimistic scenario, the question of certain de-escalation measures could be raised after the second or third meeting.
"There is a feeling that there will be changes of team members," one member of Zelenskyy's team who has previously taken part in such negotiations told UP. "So at the first meeting the new delegations will be getting to know one another and finding their feet. The substantive work will begin at the second meeting, and by around the third, there could be some actual decisions."
On Sunday, Yuri Ushakov, an aide to the Russian ruler, also described the possible first meeting of the negotiating teams as "preliminary".
"But we are telling Witkoff and Kushner that two things need to happen," said one person who has witnessed negotiations with Trump's envoys. "First, our meetings need to take place with some regularity so that there is visible progress. And each meeting must also end with a small victory – a POW exchange or something similar. Otherwise people will not believe that this is a serious process."
Land for peace: breaking Russia's formula
Ukrainian public confidence in the process ahead will be crucial. Zelenskyy's negotiating team now faces a very difficult task: moving away from the Russians' ultimatum that Ukraine surrender territory.
"Whichever way you look at it, whatever you call it, the Russians want Ukrainian troops to withdraw from Donbas," a senior figure in Zelenskyy's team explained. "Whether it's 'Donnyland' or a demilitarised zone, the main thing is that we're not there and they are."
"They still have the 'land for peace' formula in their heads. In other words, first you hand over the territory, and then there will be peace," added another UP source close to the negotiating team.
For this reason, the Ukrainian negotiators are now trying to find ways to broaden the scope of the discussion.
Some members of the negotiating team, including Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the President's Office, are looking for a solution on the ground that could satisfy both sides. Another team member, Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, is proposing that they look beyond Donbas altogether and model what the "post-Donbas" situation might look like.
Essentially, the Ukrainian side is proposing that instead of starting off by discussing who gets which village, the parties should be asking a different question: what will peace look like once the war is over?
"You've fixated on this land, but all these discussions will be pointless until Ukrainians understand what comes next. What will peace look like?" explained a UP source close to the negotiating team. "If we stick to a framework of territory in exchange for a piece of paper containing guarantees from Trump, no one in Ukraine will be able to get that through.
We need to present a picture of what this part of the world will look like, how Ukraine will be defended, and what cooperation with NATO or other arrangements might look like. Here in Ukraine, trust in Trump is only 6% higher than trust in Putin. No one here is going to do anything purely on the strength of Trump's assurances," the source added.
That is why Ukraine is pushing so hard for its European partners to be brought into the negotiations, despite resistance from Russia, and often the US.
After all, unless Ukraine, the EU, the UK and ultimately Russia agree on a security framework for Europe, the war will not end.
Trump's envoys seem to have come round to this view too. At least, sources in Zelenskyy's diplomatic team told UP that Kushner and Witkoff have conveyed the idea of discussing a new security model to Putin, who apparently even agreed to have a discussion.
How serious Putin was about this will become clear at the first meetings in Abu Dhabi.
"The Russians, incidentally, don't want the Europeans at the table at the first meeting. But our people will bring them along and brief them in Abu Dhabi in real time. The problem for the Europeans is that they don't have a designated representative, which means all these envoys can only receive signals. They have no mandate to make any decisions," an insider explained.
However, at the last two meetings, the EU finally began to settle on a representative: Björn Seibert, Head of Cabinet and the closest aide to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
This makes sense, because most of Russia's questions are not directed towards the European Three or any individual EU member state, but at the European Commission itself. It is the Commission that manages sanctions, banking restrictions and other measures.
"And so we all need to talk about the post-war world. Incidentally, this gives Putin an opportunity to talk about something big instead of haggling over tiny pieces of territory," a source on Zelenskyy's negotiating team told UP.
"If that kind of conversation begins, the question of Donbas will become a minor issue against the backdrop of a major discussion about global security.
Davyd [Arakhamiia] once explained to the Americans that the final peace settlement must be one that people in Kharkiv and Dnipro can accept. After Donbas, they're next. If people in those regions look at our peace formula and say, 'Okay, we can live with this,' then it will genuinely be a workable solution," the source added.
Witkoff, "humanitarianism" and diesel
It is curious that alongside the peace talks, the very same Trump envoys are conducting separate talks with Russia on matters that have little to do with the war but could quickly be turned into money-making opportunities. One example is the headline-grabbing story about the waiving of restrictions on Russian diesel exports so that it can be supplied to the US.
One of the key participants in both negotiating tracks is Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff.
His standing in Ukrainian political circles is complicated. Witkoff's engagement with the Russians and his proposals for restoring economic ties with Moscow have provoked outrage in Kyiv.
But UP sources involved in the negotiations acknowledge that Witkoff has one important advantage: he is able to find common ground with both Putin and Trump.
According to one source, the Russian leader treats Witkoff noticeably better than he does the other American negotiator, Jared Kushner.
"We're all absolutely fuming about this over here, but one moment Witkoff's calling Putin a humanitarian and the next he's talking about how he's going to tell his grandchildren about these meetings. Steve has a certain charisma of his own, and Putin sometimes agrees to move off his entrenched positions under its influence. That's what happened with these negotiations," said one person who has attended meetings with the envoy.
There is another reason why Witkoff's role matters to Ukraine. According to UP sources, he helped restore relations between Kyiv and the Trump administration to a relatively functional state after tensions escalated in recent days.
"Witkoff knows how to talk to Trump, and Trump listens to him," the source said. "After everything that has happened, relations are now more or less back to normal. Starlink is back, and intelligence sharing has resumed, and the Pentagon has yet to sign off on weapons purchases under the PURL programme." [The Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) enables NATO allies to purchase US-made weapons for Ukraine]
But of course Witkoff and Kushner have had much greater "successes" on the "economic front".
One of the most sensitive proposals for Ukraine has been an idea that's been reported in the Western media: bringing Russian gas back to the European market.
In the humanitarian language used by the American peacemakers, this is presented as a way of channelling money into a fund for Ukraine's reconstruction. In reality, it would simply mean the return of Russian energy – and consequently Russian influence – to the European continent.
This discussion is not new, however. During the talks in Istanbul, the Ukrainian delegation itself used the gas issue as an incentive for the Russians to end the war.
"For us, this is an opportunity to secure 'shadow reparations' from Russian gas flows, because it would be very difficult to obtain conventional reparations at the moment," a source close to the president said. "This way, the Russians would have an incentive to go back to the EU, and we would secure our share of the proceeds for post-war reconstruction. But only after the war. We are working actively with the Germans to get Trump to understand that there can be no Russian gas before the war ends."
But with the arrival of Witkoff and his acquaintance with Putin's economic adviser Kirill Dmitriev, the economic logic of the negotiations began to change. The key difference is that the Americans decided not to wait until the war was over.
The first attempt took the form of a deal in which companies affiliated with Trump's circle would purchase Russian oil giant Lukoil's overseas assets. The next development came in the form of the "diesel deal", which, fortunately for Ukraine, stirred up a global political storm.
Ukrainska Pravda has learned that the next sector in which Russian-American cooperation is to be stepped up is the mineral fertiliser market.
And so, sector by sector, it will become clear what the Russians meant by their oft-repeated phrase, the "spirit of Anchorage". [A term used by Moscow to describe its expectations for the settlement of the war in Ukraine]
***
The new phase of negotiations does not yet provide grounds for saying that the war is close to ending.
Russia has not abandoned its territorial demands. Ukraine is not prepared to accept a deal that fails to guarantee genuine security. The Americans are simultaneously looking for ways to entice Moscow with business opportunities. And the Europeans are still trying to establish effective representation in the negotiations.
Under these circumstances, even the resumption of regular meetings between the three sides would be only the beginning of a long road.
Ukrainian diplomacy now has several tasks. First and foremost, it must compel Moscow to return to substantive negotiations. Equally importantly, it must neutralise the main obstacle that has derailed all previous rounds of talks: the question of territory.
President Zelenskyy has put forward his opening proposal: freezing the conflict along the current line of contact.
If the discussion can be shifted away from Donbas and towards finding a security framework for Europe, that could open the door to a much broader agreement.
Roman Romaniuk for Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Anna Kybukevych and Tetiana Buchkovska
Edited by Teresa Pearce