Three Tracks: What is really happening in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations and why it is dangerous
The Russia-Ukraine negotiation process has once again reached an impasse. The outward sequence of events over the past month has largely repeated familiar turns from last year: the Kremlin’s rejection of a plan acceptable to Kyiv, Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow, renewed optimism from Trump, and pressure on the sides to enter direct talks that have produced no clear results.
However, the format of the talks in Abu Dhabi differed from last year's talks in Istanbul. The Russian delegation was led by a senior military figure, and the discussions focused on mechanisms for a ceasefire and monitoring arrangements. In diplomatic practice, such talks are described as technical or preliminary. They work through the practical details of an agreement for which no political decision yet exists. They can be useful, but without a political decision they mean little. At the same time, optimistic expectations attached to this technical track have shifted public attention away from the stalemate on the political track.
Contrary to popular belief, the main problem with the political track is not so much Ukraine's unwillingness to agree to transfer the northern territories of Donbas to Russian control, but rather the Trump administration's unwillingness to clearly formulate the level of security guarantees that Ukraine will receive in return. Kyiv wants clear guarantees on this issue before the question of the territories is put to a referendum. Trump does not want to give them, despite rumours that an agreement on guarantees is already in place.
At the same time, Kyiv is particularly concerned by a third, commercial-economic track of negotiations that is unfolding without its participation, but clearly affects its economic and political interests. Expectations among US negotiators of the benefits of signing a large-scale economic plan with Russia are, in turn, a concealed driver of the pressure being placed on Ukraine to make territorial concessions.
New season, old tricks
The ‘peace talks’ between Russia and Ukraine are once again at an impasse, and in this sense, Donald Trump's diplomatic ‘Groundhog Day’ continues (→ Rogov: Groundhog Year or Double Game?). The past six weeks of negotiation news have been filled to a considerable extent with narrative arcs and manoeuvres well known from last year.
At a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky on 28 December, Trump, on the one hand, demonstrated a familiar surge of optimism in each round of negotiations (‘we are much closer, perhaps very close’), and on the other hand, remarking that a deal ‘may not happen at all’. Earlier that same morning, he had spoken by telephone with Vladimir Putin and knew that the plan on which the Ukrainian and US delegations had worked for four weeks was regarded in Moscow as unacceptable.
Meanwhile, on 7 January, Senator Lindsey Graham announced that Trump had approved a vote on his sanctions bill against Russia, scheduled for the following week. This dysfunctional proposal, which envisages imposing 500% tariffs on countries that trade with Russia, is fundamentally unworkable. The United States would have to impose such tariffs on China, India, the EU, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and many other states, which economists note would simply devastate both the American and the global economy. Nevertheless, over the course of the year the bill surfaced at least four times in the news agenda, in April, May, July and November, each time when Trump was dissatisfied with Putin’s intransigence. As in previous episodes, however, there were no practical consequences. The following week, no one in Congress mentioned the vote again. Instead, Trump unexpectedly declared that it was not Putin, but Zelensky who was delaying the signing of the peace agreement.
In between these two events, however, another important statement was made. Responding to a question from a New York Times correspondent about whether the US would provide military support to Ukraine in the event of a new Russian invasion, Trump said he was confident this would not happen and offered the following formulation of security guarantees: ‘Let us put it this way: it is primarily the European allies who are involved in this, and also the United States’. These vague words to some extent undercut Zelensky’s assertion that the US was prepared to provide Ukraine with guarantees at the level of Article 5 of the NATO treaty, to be approved by Congress. Neither Trump nor known US participants in the negotiations have ever confirmed such an arrangement.
However, as is often the case when Russia-Ukraine negotiations reach an impasse, after the Kremlin predictably rejected the December peace plan, special envoy Steve Witkoff travelled to Moscow. As usual, he returned with ‘good news’: the conversation had been ‘exceptionally constructive’, and the Kremlin confirmed its agreement to trilateral consultations in Abu Dhabi, which for the next two weeks became the informational focus of the negotiating agenda and the centre of hopes for a breakthrough. In practice, the two rounds of talks on 23 to 24 January and 4 to 5 February produced only one tangible result: a prisoner exchange on a 157 for 157 basis. The previous direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul had also taken place in two rounds, on 16 May and 2 June, and their only practical outcome had likewise been a prisoner exchange, albeit on a larger scale, 1000 for 1000.
Nevertheless, Trump described the talks as ‘very, very good’ and added in his usual mysteriously optimistic manner that ‘something may happen.’ The following day, however, Zelensky told several journalists that Ukraine was under pressure from the US administration, which had set a firm goal of completing the peace process by June, after which its attention would shift to the autumn Senate elections (according to Axios). However, linking the peace process to Trump's domestic political calendar is not a new phenomenon in the history of his peacemaking efforts. In April, the administration set itself the goal of securing a ‘deal’ by the 100th day of Trump’s presidency. The November escalation in negotiations, when he demanded that Zelensky agree to a peace plan within a week, before Thanksgiving, was connected to an effort to secure an agreement by the anniversary of his inauguration on 21 January. All these deadlines, however, were missed.
A negotiating novelty: technical track instead of political
The two rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi nevertheless differed in some important respects from those in Istanbul. In Istanbul, the Russian delegation was led by a political appointee, Putin’s adviser Vladimir Medinsky, one of the ideologues of the doctrine of an existential conflict between Russia and the West, with Ukraine supposedly as its arena. The negotiating process there largely amounted to an exchange of conditions that were known in advance to be unacceptable to the other side. In the United Arab Emirates, by contrast, the Russian delegation was led by the head of the GRU, Igor Kostyukov. The talks lasted considerably longer and addressed questions relating to a ceasefire regime and the mechanisms for monitoring it.
These talks therefore corresponded to the widely used diplomatic format of technical or preliminary negotiations, which precede a political decision but already discuss ways of implementing it in practice. Such negotiations are considered a useful mechanism for nudging parties towards political compromise. Quantitative research, however, offers little evidence that they actually increase the likelihood of such a compromise being reached (→ Doyal, Hegele: Talks before the talk).
Indeed, technical negotiations cannot replace the core process of political bargaining. Yet over recent weeks the information landscape has shifted in precisely this direction. The constructive tone of technical discussions around an agreement that does not exist has created the illusion of progress, while developments on the political track have receded into the background.
However, the practical value of the technical talks has also been called into question by related events. On 29 January Trump reported a conversation with Putin in which he asked that Ukraine not be bombed for one week because of the cold weather and the forthcoming second round of talks in Abu Dhabi. The following day, 30 January, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Reuters that Putin had responded to Trump's request ‘not to strike Kyiv for a week until 1 February.’ The understanding should therefore have been in force from 25 January. In practice, however, Russian strikes continued until 29 January. After Peskov’s statement, the attacks stopped for exactly three days and resumed on 2 February. At the same time, Trump stated that Putin had complied with the request for a week-long air ceasefire. This episode illustrated how technical monitoring can become meaningless when its results are interpreted differently at the political level.
Political track: territories and security fog
Over the past six weeks all sides have described the ‘territorial question’ as the principal stumbling block in the negotiations. Behind this euphemism lies the Kremlin’s demand that those parts of the Donbas which Russia failed to seize by force should be transferred to Russian control. The Ukrainian side insists that, although the territorial issue is acutely painful, the key question remains security guarantees from its Western allies, above all the United States. Russian officials have already stated that they would not tolerate a European contingent in Ukraine and would treat it as a legitimate military target. In these circumstances, any viable model of European involvement is possible only if backed by American military and nuclear power as a credible shield against potential Russian threats and provocations. This is also how European policymakers and Zelensky view the issue.
In an interview with Axios on 7 February, alongside news of the Trump administration’s new and ambitious plan to complete negotiations by June, Zelensky acknowledged that Washington was refusing to sign an ‘almost ready’ agreement on security guarantees ahead of the other arrangements that would form part of a peace settlement. Such an agreement, he explained, is essential to building trust in Ukraine for what would be a very painful deal involving the transfer of land to Russian control. Any decision on territorial concessions must be approved by referendum, and Ukraine will not vote for it unless it is confident in the reliability of the guarantees. According to Reuters’ account of the US administration’s plan, the overall framework of agreements should be settled by March, with a referendum and presidential elections to be held in Ukraine by June.
Thus, the real stumbling block in the negotiations is not the territorial issue itself, but the scheme of ‘Eastern Donbas in exchange for US security guarantees.’ In Ukraine, the vagueness surrounding this issue, deliberately maintained by the Trump administration, is keenly felt. Kyiv refuses to make territorial concessions until it receives reliable assurances that the White House will not downgrade the guarantees at the last moment. This is the underlying issue of the political track of the negotiating process.
Commercial-economic track: territory in exchange for trillions
Finally, at a briefing on 7 February, Zelensky touched on another aspect of the negotiation process. According to Ukrainian intelligence, while technical talks were taking place in Abu Dhabi (meaningless without a political compromise), US negotiators were conducting consultations on a large-scale US–Russia economic cooperation programme. This programme includes, among other things, the use of frozen Russian assets and post-war reconstruction of Ukrainian territories. The scale of the programme is estimated at $12 trillion, which is roughly six times Russia’s GDP and equivalent to Russia’s current export volumes over roughly 30 years.
Despite the almost anecdotal gigantism of such figures, this information reveals the logic of the current American negotiators and the essence of their negotiations with the Kremlin. The Wall Street Journal reported at the end of 2025 that behind the negotiating zeal of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner lay extensive commercial plans of a group of businessmen connected to the Trump administration. Confirming the existence of a large economic package being developed out of sight of Ukraine and Europe, and citing intelligence data, Zelensky, according to Western sources, said that Ukraine would not support any such agreements, even potential ones, concluded without its participation. And, according to a more radical version reported by the Ukrainian media, he said that ‘the economic benefits of third countries cannot be paid for with Ukrainian territories.’ In other words, he made it clear that American negotiators are interested in using economic incentives to pressure Ukraine on the territorial issue, seeking to obtain benefits in exchange as part of an economic deal.
At present, the negotiating process is therefore divided into three tracks: technical, political, and commercial-economic. The first has been in the media spotlight over the past two weeks, but in reality, it means nothing without a political decision.
The political track has been somewhat mystified in public perception, with many believing that the issue is simply Ukraine’s refusal to hand over northern parts of the Donbas to Russia. In fact, Zelensky’s office considers this scenario possible, but only in exchange for substantial and verifiable US security guarantees. Trump and his administration, meanwhile, continue to avoid any clear commitment. This is where the political bottleneck to a possible compromise lies.
Finally, on the commercial-economic track, which is proceeding without Ukraine’s participation, the Russian and US sides are tempting each other with staggering prospects of economic cooperation, conditional upon Ukraine’s agreement to territorial concessions. These prospects push the US administration to increase pressure on Kyiv.