Witkoff says Putin agreed to European role in Ukraine peace talks after Moscow meeting

A seat at the table for Europe

US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, 12 November, in a meeting that lasted four and a half hours. Witkoff said the Russian president had agreed that European officials would join the next round of talks on ending the war in Ukraine. Kushner said the envoys saw certain shifts on the European side and hoped to involve Europe in a multilateral format. The envoys went to the Kremlin straight from Abu Dhabi, where trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States took place on 10 and 11 November. Those were the first direct negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in nine months, and European Union officials were present in Abu Dhabi without taking part directly.

Putin rules out European troops

Putin still rejected any European role in a postwar security arrangement for Ukraine. He told the envoys that the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine was unacceptable to Russia because it poses a threat to Russia's security. Putin asked what a deployment of European troops after a peace deal would mean and said the war would resume instantly, in his words. He said he would stay inflexible on his maximalist demands and offered a temporary truce in a key front-line city, without naming it in the reports. Moscow also reiterated its demands over territories it claims to have annexed.

Dispute over Europe's security order

The Kremlin's push for a new security order in Europe drew sharp responses. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's adviser on international affairs, said the current European security system no longer works and called for a new indivisible architecture. He said Europeans should decide whether they back ending the war or continuing it, and that their actions so far pointed to the second option. Ushakov described the Abu Dhabi talks as constructive and productive, and said negotiations would continue. European leaders rejected the push, according to the Financial Times. European Council president António Costa, who hosted Zelenskyy and other leaders in Dublin on Thursday, said:

“There is no need to reinvent the wheel.”

Russian officials have said repeatedly that the continent's arrangements need redesigning, including a ban on further Nato expansion, an end to drills near the Russian border and the withdrawal of troops and equipment from Nato's eastern flank. In many European capitals these demands are read as an attempt to restore Moscow's sphere of influence.

Dublin and next steps

After Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner met Zelenskyy late on Thursday in Dublin, where he attended a meeting of the European Political Community. Witkoff said the envoys would brief Zelenskyy on everything that had occurred. Zelenskyy had said on Wednesday that a window of opportunity could exist for a ceasefire before 2027. He warned that Europe needed to pay attention to US and Russian discussions of a possible new security framework between Europe and Russia. EU leaders are due to discuss the Ukraine peace talks in Dublin on Friday, 13 November, and European governments have so far been skeptical about a breakthrough.