OPINION: The Kremlin says yes to a meeting and no to a pause, and Kyiv pays the difference

A table with no pause

September 25, at 12:38

A meeting with no pause isn’t a negotiation. It’s a calendar you fill in while the other side keeps striking.

On September 25, Volodymyr Zelensky tells reporters that Washington is proposing a three-way meeting, Ukraine, the United States and Russia, at the technical level. The suggested venue: the United Arab Emirates. The date: Kyiv is still waiting for it, Ukrinform reports.

A calendar, then. With an empty box.

Kyiv, that same afternoon

The same day, in Kyiv, the mayor counts five residents dead in the day’s strikes. Among them, a 14-year-old boy, in the morning. Four others after a drone hit an office building, in the afternoon.

The proposal lands at 12:38 p.m. The drones didn’t wait for a date.

I’m not against the table. I’m against the illusion that a table, with no stopping time, slows anything down.

An empty box on the calendar. Five lives gone in Kyiv.

The empty calendar

Kyiv waits for a date

Kyiv is waiting for the date. Kyiv is waiting for the venue to be confirmed. Kyiv is waiting to learn who will sit in the delegations. So far, I have found no written confirmation from either Washington or Abu Dhabi.

In diplomacy, a date is a commitment. Without one, a meeting remains an intention. And an intention can’t be verified.

The proposal exists because the Ukrainian president says so. And because the Kremlin does.

Moscow says soon

On that same September 25, Dmitry Peskov confirms to TASS that a three-way meeting came up during the phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on September 8. He speaks of a possible meeting in the near future. Then he adds that he can give no further details.

Two days earlier, on the 23rd, the Kremlin said the conditions weren’t in place to resume talks, according to UNITED24.

In the near future. No date. No venue. No agenda.

Some phrases open a door. That one mostly opens a delay.

Soon, says Moscow. The calendar stays blank.

Two envoys, two languages

New York, September 24

The day before the announcement, September 24, Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev meets Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in New York, according to Yevropeiska Pravda, citing CNN.

What does Dmitriev talk about? Peskov told TASS on the 25th. Possible economic cooperation between Moscow and Washington. Cooperation that is absent today, he specifies, and that could benefit both.

The spokesman who talks about absent cooperation says nothing about the truce, which is absent too.

The Security Council, on the 23rd

On September 23, Sergei Lavrov addresses the UN Security Council. He says Moscow is ready to negotiate a lasting and just peace. Then he says what matters: there will be no pause in the Russian offensive during negotiations.

Two envoys. Two languages. One direction.

Dmitriev talks business. Lavrov refuses a pause.

Business for Washington, war for Kyiv.

Three weeks of shuttling

Moscow, September 5

The proposed meeting doesn’t come out of nowhere. It caps three weeks of shuttling.

On September 5, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow for more than three hours, according to UNITED24. On September 6, they are in Kyiv, sitting across from Zelensky. On the 8th, Putin and Trump talk by phone.

Witkoff and Kushner see Putin. Witkoff and Kushner see Zelensky. Witkoff and Kushner see Dmitriev. Nobody sees a pause.

New York, the 22nd to the 24th

On September 22, Zelensky meets Trump in New York, on the sidelines of the General Assembly, according to Reuters, as relayed by The Moscow Times. On the 23rd, Rubio spends one hour with Lavrov. On the 24th, Dmitriev sees the American envoys.

On the 25th, the proposal comes out. Through Kyiv, in front of reporters.

Weeks of flights, lounges, handshakes. The scrape of chairs pulled up to a table, in Moscow, in Kyiv, in New York.

All that motion produced a box to fill in. Not a stopping time.

Three weeks of shuttling. No stopping time.

What Lavrov put on the record

The 10,227th meeting

The UN’s official summary of the 10,227th meeting of the Security Council lays out the Russian position. Moscow wants a negotiated peace, on the basis of the questions Vladimir Putin raised in June 2024. But no pause.

Lavrov adds that Europe would demand a pause in order to arm Kyiv. That’s his argument. He makes it in his own name, in front of the other 14 members of the Council.

A pause, in his mouth, becomes a European trick. An offensive, in the same sentence, becomes a condition of peace. It’s an inversion. It has a date.

That is the adversary of this piece. Not a people. A dated statement, delivered by a minister, recorded by the UN.

The Lavrov doctrine of September 23

I stand with Kyiv, which says yes to the table. Against the Lavrov doctrine of September 23, which rules out any pause while talks go on. Because two days later, on the very day the meeting was proposed, Kyiv counted five dead.

A negotiation with no pause is a negotiation Moscow conducts with drones laid on the table.

Talking commits you to nothing when you refuse to stop.

The Emirates, again

January and February 2026

The Emirates aren’t a new idea. There was Abu Dhabi, starting January 23, 2026, according to the Emirati foreign ministry. There was Abu Dhabi again, on February 4 and 5. There was Geneva, on February 17 and 18, according to the Kyiv Independent. There was a fourth round planned in Abu Dhabi in March, postponed because of the war in the Middle East, the Kyiv Post recalls.

Then nothing.

March 19, the pause

On March 19, Peskov confirmed, according to Ukrainska Pravda, that the three-way talks were on pause. Resuming them, he said, would wait until schedules lined up, above all those of Moscow’s American intermediaries.

Since Geneva, no three-way round has taken place. Seven months.

Seven months, in Kyiv, is a whole summer of air-raid alerts and the start of an autumn.

The only pause Moscow accepts is a pause in the talks.

Seven months of pause at the table. None at the front.

While they talked

Abu Dhabi, February

On February 5, The Moscow Times reported that during the second Abu Dhabi round, Russia was hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with missiles and drones.

While they talked, the missiles. While they talked, the drones. While they talked, the power grid, in the dead of winter.

This isn’t today’s accusation. It’s a fact dated February.

February, in Kyiv, is the month you sleep in your clothes when the heat cuts out.

New York, September

On September 23, Lavrov simply made the method official. What was done in February without saying so will now be done out loud.

Lavrov invented nothing on the 23rd. He put a name on a habit.

And yet on the 25th, Peskov says not a word about the strikes. He talks about a meeting. Not about stopping.

Who, at that table, will ask for the stopping time?

They sit down in Abu Dhabi. They strike in Kyiv.

Miami, December 14 and 15

Putin invited to the G20

There is another date, and this one is set. The G20 summit will take place on December 14 and 15 in Miami, at a golf resort owned by Donald Trump, according to Ukrinform.

On September 23, after an hour with Lavrov, Marco Rubio confirmed that Washington had invited Vladimir Putin to that summit, Meduza reports. Moscow hasn’t decided yet, Peskov said, as quoted by the Kyiv Post.

Zelensky says he is ready to go, and to meet Putin if the Americans invite him. The Kremlin has already answered that idea, according to Ukrinform: a Putin–Zelensky meeting in Miami is impossible.

What Moscow pockets

Here is Washington’s bad move, and it has to be named act by act. Inviting Putin to the G20 without having secured any pause means handing over the photo before the price.

A summit is prepared months ahead. The guest lists. The rooms. The order of the photos. None of it waits for the war to end.

A technical meeting with no date costs the Kremlin nothing between now and then. It earns it the image of a reasonable partner, all the way to Miami.

The summit date is set. The pause date isn’t.

Abu Dhabi brought men home

314 people

The objection deserves its strongest form. Here it is.

On February 5, at the end of the second Abu Dhabi round, 314 prisoners were exchanged, 157 from each side, according to The Moscow Times. The first swap in five months. Steve Witkoff called the talks detailed and productive.

Diplomacy brought soldiers home. Diplomacy brought civilians home. Diplomacy restored, according to US European Command, a high-level military dialogue between Washington and Moscow, suspended a few months before the February 2022 invasion. Diplomacy worked.

The Emirates, for their part, claimed in January to have mediated 17 exchanges and freed 4,641 detainees. No table, no swap. That’s true.

What the table didn’t stop

On September 23, UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo gave the number that answers it. In the first eight months of 2026, more civilians died or were injured in Ukraine than in all of 2025.

The year of the Abu Dhabi and Geneva rounds. The year of the swaps.

The table gave back prisoners. It didn’t give back the sky.

Men returned, a sky still open.

Kyiv wants the meeting

Kyiv says yes

There’s worse, for my argument. Kyiv wants this meeting.

On that same September 25, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha tells Ukrinform that nothing on the Ukrainian side stands in the way of three-way meetings, even at the leaders’ level. Zelensky, for his part, lists the American format among three paths to a ceasefire.

A columnist who backs Ukraine can’t be more skeptical than Ukraine without saying so. I’m saying so. Here, and not in a passing clause.

Trump’s format and its results

The Trump administration deserves credit for this too. The most visible results of 2026 between Moscow and Kyiv came out of its format. The 314 prisoners of Abu Dhabi. The restored military channel.

And Washington, it’s true, put the energy truce into its own framework.

At the Security Council, the American representative called for not widening the war, for recognizing that there is no military solution, for going back to the table. That’s the right instinct.

It’s true, and it doesn’t change this: a table with no pause leaves the price where it was.

Trump’s format brought men home. Not nights.

Twenty-five thousand a month

Washington’s number

At the Security Council on September 23, the American representative repeated Donald Trump’s line: the dying has to stop. He cited 25,000 casualties a month.

Twenty-five thousand casualties is a good-sized stadium, emptied every month.

Twenty-five thousand.

That isn’t Kyiv’s number. It’s the number of the country proposing the meeting.

Kyiv’s calendar

In Kyiv’s calendar, the boxes aren’t empty. They hold tolls.

September 25, five residents dead. A 14-year-old boy. Four people after the strike on an office building. Thirty-one injured, according to the mayor.

I’d like to believe that a technical meeting changes that. I want to believe it, every time. I’ll admit it: that’s the part of this job that wears you down most.

Over there, at night, a hand gropes for the stair railing. An engine passes over the roof. People count.

Then I reread Lavrov. No pause. During negotiations. In any format.

If the negotiations drag on until December, at 25,000 a month…

Every month without a pause already has its number.

The Kremlin picks from the package

The September 24 framework

Washington didn’t propose just a table. As of September 24, the Trump administration’s framework bundled three pieces, according to UNITED24. An energy infrastructure truce. Reopening the Black Sea grain corridor. And the three-way meeting, in Abu Dhabi.

On the 25th, Moscow answers on the third piece. On the first two, nothing.

Zelensky, for his part, named three paths to a ceasefire, Ukrinform reports. An energy truce. A truce at sea. The three-way format.

What Rubio promises

On September 23, according to Meduza, Marco Rubio called an energy truce hard to achieve. He said Washington would try anyway.

And yet the piece Moscow ruled out at the UN is exactly that one. No pause. In any format.

Accepting the table means looking reasonable. Accepting the truce means stopping the strikes. Moscow knows the difference. Better than we do.

The table stays open because it costs the Kremlin nothing. The two truces stay shut because they would cost it something.

Moscow takes the piece that costs nothing.

Fifty-one countries

New York, September 23

On that same September 23, Europe answered Lavrov without waiting for the Emirates.

According to the Kyiv Post, 51 countries jointly called on Russia to accept a full ceasefire and enter substantive talks. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas read the statement alongside Sybiha and French minister Jean-Noël Barrot.

Lavrov says Europe wants a pause to rearm Kyiv. Europe says it wants a ceasefire. Same day. Same building.

Brussels and Washington, one demand

This is where the West has to hold. Not by choosing between Washington and Brussels. By keeping the same demand on each shore of the Atlantic: the truce first, the photo after.

And yet the calendar moving fastest isn’t Europe’s. It’s Miami’s.

No European capital is inviting anyone to the December G20. Washington is.

Fifty-one countries for the truce. Moscow for the table.

The price of admission

A package that stays whole

My choice is simple, and it can be proven wrong.

I want Kyiv to go to the Emirates. I want Washington to set a date there. I want the energy truce to stay in the same sentence as the meeting. I want the Kremlin to choose in front of witnesses. I want Miami to wait for its answer.

A pause in exchange for a photo.

If the Kremlin says no, Washington will know who it is inviting to Miami. If it says yes, Kyiv gains nights.

What Kyiv can demand

This isn’t an extreme demand. It’s the package Washington built itself, and the path Zelensky named himself.

Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members support a ceasefire, Sybiha pointed out on the 23rd, according to the Kyiv Post. One member blocks it.

The day Moscow refuses the truce at the Emirates table, it will do so in front of Washington, and no longer only in front of the Europeans it accuses of wanting to rearm Kyiv.

No photo in Miami without a stopping time.

The pause, or the showcase

The December calendar

On the calendar, one firm date. Miami, December 14 and 15. The technical meeting’s date is blank. The pause’s date doesn’t exist.

The Kremlin said yes to the principle of a meeting, no to halting the strikes. Its envoy talks business in New York. Its minister talks offensive at the UN.

Kyiv’s calendar has no empty boxes.

Meetings with no pause date

Which date will we demand to see first on the calendar: a meeting, or the day the strikes stop?

A table isn’t a truce.

A stopping date would be one.

Yes to the table, no to the pause. Kyiv pays the difference.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• United Nations Security Council — 10,227th meeting on Ukraine, Lavrov and DiCarlo, September 23, 2026
• TASS — Peskov on the three-way meeting and Dmitriev’s mission, September 25, 2026
• Ukrinform — Zelensky on a technical-level meeting proposed in the UAE, September 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• UNITED24 Media — the American framework and the three-way meeting, September 25, 2026
• Meduza — Lavrov after Rubio, no pause and a G20 invitation, September 23, 2026
• The Moscow Times — 314 prisoners exchanged after Abu Dhabi, February 5, 2026