EU wants seat at Ukraine talks; Kremlin says trilateral

The European Union wants a seat in the next round of Ukraine peace talks, but the Kremlin said Oct. 23 that the meeting in Abu Dhabi will be trilateral, with only Russia, the United States and Ukraine at the table.

The dispute over format matters because the talks cover security guarantees for Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and post-war recovery, yet the EU has had only one official in the rooms so far: Bjoern Seibert, chief of cabinet to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Euronews reported Oct. 23.

Commission deputy chief spokesperson Arianna Podestà said Oct. 23 that Brussels expects the next discussion to be multilateral. “There is an expectation that there will be a multilateral-level discussion with representatives at senior official level,” she said, according to Euronews.

She said the EU should be represented jointly by the Commission and the European Council, and left open whether officials might meet Russian representatives face to face.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the idea of a wider format for now. He said the Abu Dhabi talks, planned for the first half of November, “will be held in a trilateral format,” TASS reported. Asked about European involvement, he also said: “Nothing can be ruled out in advance.”

The dates are not settled. TodayPress.tv reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ready to resume trilateral talks in the final week of November, which differs from Peskov’s first-half-of-November timing. Putin said the goal is a final peace deal that secures both Russia and Ukraine, not a temporary ceasefire.

Ukraine has said it welcomes any format at any time, Euronews reported. The talks stalled in February, after the United States launched its war on Iran, according to the same report, and Washington wants to resume technical-level trilateral talks in November, after the U.S. midterm elections.

Earlier rounds were thinner on European voices than Brussels would like. The Miami talks included the national security advisers of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, plus NATO. The later talks in Oslo included Italy in place of France. Pedro Lourtie, chief of cabinet to European Council President António Costa, was not invited to either, Euronews reported.

European capitals have also been unsettled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s diesel deal with Putin and the easing of some sanctions on Russia, Euronews reported. Canada News Media has reported on the first Russian diesel tanker bound for the United States and on how EU leaders backed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the rift with Trump widened.

EU leaders discussed naming a special envoy for Russia at last week’s summit but found no consensus candidate, Euronews reported. Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who co-hosted the Oslo talks, has returned to the conversation. Moscow could accept him as an intermediary, but only if he does not repeat the European position, according to the same report. Zelenskyy has urged European leaders to open their own channel to Moscow.

The U.S. envoy, Steve Witkoff, met Putin in Saint Petersburg after the Oslo round, in talks Canada News Media covered when a U.S. teacher was freed. The Kremlin later called Witkoff’s proposals of little real value, Euronews reported. None of the claims from either side about the talks could be independently verified.

For Canada, which backs Ukraine and counts a large Ukrainian diaspora, the question of who sits at the table lands just before the EU-Canada summit in Montreal on Oct. 29 and 30. Reports ahead of that summit say the new partnership could include support for Ukraine, according to a Politico report cited by ua.news. Canada News Media has the summit dates.

The next step is the Abu Dhabi round, expected in November. Whether an EU official gets a chair will show how much leverage Brussels has over a process Washington and Moscow are steering.

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Via Euronews and TASS.