ANALYSIS: Abu Dhabi after November 4, a peace negotiated without Europe

A date chosen by the Kremlin

A date.

November 4.

A Russian holiday.

Then, maybe, a table.

In the Gulf.

The Kremlin set its calendar, and it pinned it to its own national holiday, not to Ukraine’s emergency.

That detail says it all.

An aggressor who picks the date of the peace also wants to write its clauses.

Moscow decides when.

Moscow decides where.

And with whom.

A peace whose day, place and guests are chosen by the aggressor starts badly, whatever its final form.

What this analysis looks for

One simple question.

Who writes this peace?

Kyiv, which fights.

Washington, which referees.

Or Moscow, which waits.

This week’s signals sketch a negotiation where Europe stays outside and the Kremlin keeps control of the tempo.

Nothing is settled.

Everything is being prepared.

And every detail counts.

A misplaced comma in a peace deal can cost an entire region, and Kyiv knows it.

Ushakov on television

Yuri Ushakov speaks.

Putin’s adviser.

He is talking on the Vesti channel, Kateryna Hodunova reports in The Kyiv Independent.

“The next deadline is now November 4, our major holiday,” he says, adding that Russia will then be ready to resume negotiations.

After the holiday.

Not before.

November 4 is National Unity Day in Russia, a date loaded with patriotic symbols.

Negotiating after the holiday.

As a declared winner.

The Kremlin cares about the staging as much as the content, because its population has to believe in a victory.

Or the illusion of one.

A test, according to Moscow

Then the first meeting.

A “trial run.”

The deal? It “still needs work.”

Still needs work.

Translation: nothing is ready.

The Kremlin still rejects a ceasefire and demands the Donbas, while Ukraine has accepted several American truce proposals.

Kyiv said yes.

Several times.

Moscow said no.

Several times too.

Any honest observer has to note who accepts truces and who refuses them.

That is the real asymmetry in this negotiation, the one the press releases avoid naming.

Stubb and Støre call Putin

On October 27, two Nordic leaders pick up the phone to speak directly to the master of the Kremlin.

Alexander Stubb for Finland.

Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway.

On the other end: Putin.

A direct call to the Kremlin remains a rare gesture for countries that back Kyiv without reservation.

Their joint statement opens with a sentence of geography: “Finland and Norway border Russia.”

Then a sentence of alliance.

“They are firm supporters of Ukraine.”

Geography and alliance, in the same text, with no embarrassment and no apology.

A lesson.

Two sentences.

Two truths.

They do not speak for all of Europe, Chris Powers specifies in The Kyiv Independent.

Only for themselves.

What they said

Støre talks about the cost.

“Enormous human and material costs,” he says.

He argues for de-escalation.

Stubb talks about security.

“The outcome of this war will have a direct impact on our and the broader European security.”

Then a sentence that bothers some people: “Ending the war requires direct discussions.”

Direct, really.

Nobody signs peace with someone who is absent, and Stubb reminds that to those who dream of a deal without Moscow.

With Putin.

Two neighbors of Russia who call the Kremlin betray nothing.

Two neighbors call Putin so nobody else speaks in their place.

Three countries at the table

Abu Dhabi, in November.

Trilateral talks.

Ukraine, Russia, the United States.

Three chairs.

And Europe? Not there.

Not expected.

A Europe absent from the table will still have to fund reconstruction and guarantee security.

The paradox is complete.

A senior European official mentions a round of talks in Europe before the one in the Gulf.

A round before.

Not during.

The continent that pays the most for Ukraine’s survival ends up in the hallway of its own security.

What Europe brings anyway

It brings a lot.

Norway is the only country outside the European Union to have pledged to support Kyiv’s financial needs for 2027.

A whole year.

And Finland? 35 packages.

Thirty-five, already.

Finnish companies ICEYE and Nokia are even helping build a Ukrainian satellite communication system.

A Ukrainian system.

Not an American one.

Those who finance the defensive war have reasons to want a seat at the table that will decide the peace.

They have paid.

They have also taken risks facing Moscow, often more than others.

They want to see.

Witkoff and Putin

October 21, Witkoff.

At the imperial palace.

Three hours.

A ninth meeting, Al Jazeera counts.

Nine meetings.

A habit.

Nine meetings without peace show that the Kremlin likes talking more than it likes concluding.

Putin says yes “in principle.”

Witkoff talks of “some degree of momentum.”

Ushakov, for his part, says there “wasn’t really much substance” in the new approaches presented in Oslo.

Two readings.

One room.

What Putin offers in return

Putin knows how to sell.

Iran, first.

Then fertilizer.

He offers fertilizer.

He also frees Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher held in Russia for more than four years.

A human gesture.

A calculated gesture.

The Kremlin frees a prisoner, offers services on another front, and expects a return on the Ukrainian front.

The barter is classic.

It often works.

Washington must remember that every Kremlin gesture has a hidden price, paid later by Kyiv.

The last talks dated from February, before the American and Israeli war against Iran, Al Jazeera recalls.

Eight months of pause.

Then everything restarts.

A list that does not change

Russia’s demands are known.

The AP recalls them.

Four regions vacated.

Giving up on NATO.

A reduced army.

The Russian language.

The church tied to Moscow.

Each of these demands would strike at the heart of the Ukrainian state, from its defense to its culture.

Nothing less.

Accepting them would turn Ukraine into a protectorate, and Kyiv will refuse.

Russia already occupies about 20% of Ukrainian territory, and it still claims what it has not conquered.

More than the front line.

More than its weapons have taken.

Putin’s sentence

Putin repeated it.

All his objectives “will be achieved.”

All of them, without exception.

Spoken while talks are being prepared, such a sentence should cool the most optimistic minds in Washington.

The sentence leaves no room for compromise, and it dates from the same week as the promises of dialogue.

On the day of his “in principle,” Moscow claims to have destroyed more than 800 Ukrainian drones, an unverifiable figure.

Eight hundred.

A war figure.

Not a peace figure.

A regime that negotiates while promising to achieve all its objectives is not negotiating a peace; it is negotiating a surrender.

Somebody else’s.

Zelensky facing Alla Mazur

Zelensky answers.

On TSN.

Facing Alla Mazur.

The interview is long, precise and free of spin.

The president draws his limits.

“Our security guarantees are our guarantees, and they cannot be dictated by the Russian side.”

Our guarantees.

Not theirs.

“Restrictions on our army and Ukraine’s neutrality are not up for discussion.”

Not up for discussion.

Kyiv refuses in advance any peace that would disarm it, and it is right to say so before the table.

Lachlan Hyatt reports the interview in The Kyiv Independent, and the tone there is sharp.

No ambiguity.

NATO plus a strong army

Zelensky sums up his formula.

“NATO plus a strong Ukrainian army.”

Two pillars.

Territory remains a “red line,” to be handled at the level of leaders.

A red line.

Not a technical subject.

The AP also mentions guarantees in an “Article 5-like format,” the one of NATO’s collective defense.

Similar, not identical.

That gap will cost.

A coalition of the willing of some thirty countries is preparing that support, MPR News recalls.

No Ukrainian army, no peace. Only a pause.

Zelensky’s number

One number dominates the interview.

800,000 troops.

That is the army size Zelensky wants to keep, if finances allow.

Eight hundred thousand.

Moscow wants to cut it.

Kyiv wants to keep it.

Between the two, the whole negotiation fits inside that number, far more than inside the maps of the Donbas.

A strong army deters.

A reduced army invites.

Ukraine’s recent history proves it: every weakness perceived in Moscow has come before an offensive.

Who will pay for the army

The question follows.

Who will pay?

It costs a lot.

Every month, every year, someone will have to pay the wages, equipment and training of that army.

Europe will pay plenty.

That cost is still lower than the cost of a new invasion in five or ten years.

Norway pledges 2027.

Washington referees.

A security guarantee without lasting funding for the Ukrainian army would only be a promise written in sand.

Zelensky knows it.

He says so clearly.

“I don’t want us to be left without tools,” he tells TSN: without sanctions, money or frozen assets.

Empty-handed, then.

The words are simple.

They sum up the fear of a country that has already watched international promises evaporate after a signature.

The three concrete topics

His agenda?

“Energy, grain, and people, these are the specifics.”

Three topics.

Nothing abstract.

These three topics can move forward even before a global deal, if Moscow truly wants it.

Energy, because Ukrainian power plants burn every night under Russian strikes.

Grain, because Ukraine feeds part of the world through the Black Sea.

People, because Ukrainian prisoners are still waiting for an exchange.

Three emergencies.

Each one touches millions of people, in Ukraine as in the countries that buy its grain.

None of them abstract.

The energy precedent

A precedent weighs.

Trump had tried.

An energy truce.

It failed, The Kyiv Independent recalls.

The truce did not hold, and Ukrainian power plants kept burning.

Trump even threatened to cut intelligence to Kyiv, and he eased sanctions on Moscow.

Two pressures.

Two directions.

Both ended up weighing on Kyiv.

The referee pushes the one who blocks.

Not the one who accepts.

Washington must find that simple rule again before it sits down in Abu Dhabi.

Putin seeks Trump in China

A serious rumor is circulating.

Putin is reportedly seeking a meeting with Trump in China as early as next month, according to The Kyiv Independent.

Kyiv absent.

A summit about Ukraine, without Ukraine, would bring back bad memories for all of Eastern Europe.

Al Jazeera even mentions a possible three-way meeting, with Xi Jinping as host.

Trump, Putin, Xi.

In China.

A Ukrainian peace discussed in Beijing, without Kyiv, would be the exact dream of the Kremlin and its main backer.

A dream.

For them.

For Kyiv, it would be a nightmare, and for Europe one more humiliation.

A double setback.

Why China matters here

China is not neutral.

It buys Russian oil.

It watches.

It counts American concessions, one by one, and it draws its own conclusions for Taiwan.

Beijing remains the West’s first strategic threat, and handing it the role of peace salon would be a mistake.

A serious mistake.

The venue of a negotiation says who organizes it, and the organizer often ends up reaping the benefit.

Abu Dhabi, fine.

Beijing, no.

Washington must choose the venue as carefully as the content, since one shapes the other.

The pressure on Kyiv

Trump was clear.

Ukraine must end the war, or else “a very bad thing” will happen, Al Jazeera reports.

A threat.

Aimed at Kyiv.

Witkoff even called Putin “humanitarian,” the AP notes, in a week when Russian missiles were aimed at Kyiv.

Humanitarian, really?

The word shocks in Kyiv, where Russian missiles hit a university campus that same week.

It shocks here too.

An American envoy who hands out compliments to the Kremlin weakens his own position as a negotiator.

What it does right

And yet Washington acts.

The channel works.

Nine meetings with Putin, an American freed, a local truce in Oleshky: all of that exists.

These results count.

They count, and we salute them, because an open channel is better than a closed door.

The channel exists.

But one hand that lifts sanctions while the other presses Kyiv sends Moscow a scrambled signal.

The Kremlin reads signals.

It reads this one.

It concludes that waiting pays.

Every concession without a return teaches the Kremlin that patience pays more than compromise.

Washington presses Kyiv. It loosens Moscow.

The southern laboratory

A full-scale test exists.

Oleshky, in the south.

Occupied, starving.

Melania Trump says she helped broker a local ceasefire there, ABC News reports.

Three steps.

The ceasefire.

Aid next.

Then the freedom to leave.

The freedom to leave.

The Ukrainian negotiator warns that such a deal will be “extremely challenging to implement” on the ground.

Extremely challenging.

For a single town.

Oleshky once had about 24,000 residents, while a general peace would involve millions of lives.

What the test reveals

If a local truce demands this much effort, a general peace will demand infinitely more.

Scale changes everything.

Oleshky serves as a yardstick.

A truce needs deminers.

Observers too.

Time, above all.

A lot of time.

Abu Dhabi lacks it.

Zelensky, for his part, reminds the Hudson Institute that Patriot interceptors are still on hold, ABC News notes.

On hold.

Like the peace.

A credible peace demands delivered interceptors, not just traveling diplomats.

Zelensky’s test

Zelensky said it on TSN.

“We will very quickly see in November whether it was a trick or not,” he warns, without closing a single door.

A trick.

The word is out.

He does not shut the door, but he keeps his hand on the handle, ready to close it.

Caution, too.

The Ukrainian president keeps every option open, because he has learned never to depend on a single promise.

On the Patriots: “very slow.”

Very slow.

Like everything else.

What will decide

Three things will decide.

Europe at the table.

An intact Ukrainian army.

Beijing kept out.

If Moscow gets Europe’s absence, a smaller army and a summit in China, Abu Dhabi will be nothing but scenery.

If Kyiv holds its red lines, the negotiation will at least have meaning.

Nothing is written.

Moscow has the date.

The rest depends on Washington, on Europe and on Kyiv’s ability to hold.

Moscow chose the date. Kyiv must hold its limits.

Abu Dhabi after November 4, a peace negotiated without Europe.

Who will hold the pen, in the end, once the Russian holiday has passed and the table is set?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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