US envoy Jared Kushner is looking to the Nato-Russia Council as a model for post-war European security, the Washington Post reported, as Ukraine, Russia and the US meet in Abu Dhabi.
Kushner has linked his push for a Ukraine truce to wider multilateral talks between Russia and Europe on post-war security for the continent, and the template is the council set up after the Cold War, columnist David Ignatius wrote on November 6, citing an official familiar with the negotiations. Nato and Russia founded the council in Rome in 2002, five years after the Founding Act that first gave Moscow a standing seat for consultations with the alliance.
Russia broke off diplomatic relations with Nato in October 2021 and Nato suspended all practical co-operation with Russia in April 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, and the council last met in January 2022, a month before the full-scale invasion.
The council gave Russia a voice in Nato’s deliberations and no vote in its decisions, which fits the five goals Kushner set out on November 5 – permanent consultations, crisis communications, military transparency, reciprocal steps to cut escalation risks and a long-term framework – and his line that no country would hold a veto over another’s alliances. The Kremlin wants more. Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov has called for Nato’s posture to return to where it stood before 1997, when the alliance began to expand into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, RFE/RL reported.
Two trains, one track
Europeans told Ignatius they are ready for a dialogue with Russia but will only agree a security framework once a ceasefire is in place in Ukraine. “Both tracks are on,” an official from a close US ally wrote in a message, cautioning that the “Ukraine peace agreement has to be settled before agreement on security architecture”.
“Many risks for us in this approach, but better to engage than not. Our approach is still that these issues can be discussed only after the war. … Not gonna be easy talks,” a senior official from another leading European country wrote. Leading European governments back Kushner’s effort, the official said, but there is “broad unity in Europe” that talks with Russia should only follow a ceasefire.
Sequencing is the issue that will decide it, according to Ignatius. “Kushner wants a simultaneous process, with both trains arriving at the same time, so to speak. Europe, standing with Ukraine, is insisting that the ceasefire track come first,” he wrote.
Putin “is said to have been enthusiastic about the Europe-wide security plan” when he met Kushner’s fellow envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on October 21, with Kushner joining by video link, the column said. After meeting Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev at the White House on November 5, President Donald Trump said that “there’s going to be an agreement, it’s going to be a big agreement, and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine”, adding that “it might involve all of Europe”, the Telegraph reported. Ignatius called that “wildly premature” in the light of what European officials had told him.
Kyiv is wary of a deal that runs ahead of its own guarantees. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that the new US security plan for Europe could be “dangerous” while Russia shows no sign of wanting to end the war, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Days earlier, Zelenskiy had opened the door to discussing Moscow’s security demands, but only once Ukraine’s own protection is settled.
Abu Dhabi tests the security track
The round in the UAE capital on November 10-11 is the first three-way meeting since February, and both delegations have been built for security talks rather than a ceasefire alone. Russia is sending presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and Yuri Zhigarlovsky, deputy head of the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax on November 7. It is Ryabkov’s first round. He runs relations with Washington and arms control, and the agenda covers security, de-escalation, humanitarian steps and mutual security guarantees, Kommersant reported.
Ukraine’s team is led by Rustem Umerov and includes Kyrylo Budanov, head of the president’s office, and David Arakhamia, the Kyiv Independent reported. Kyiv has already handed its proposals to Washington, and it arrives with a 2027 war bill still unfunded.
Every side has spent the past week setting out what a security deal has to contain. Zelenskiy wants guarantees spelled out. “What matters is that it’s clear on paper,” he told Ukraine’s 1+1 television on November 5. “If Russia starts (attacking) again, what will happen? Who will do what, with what means, and when?” he said, AP reported.
Moscow wants the guarantees to run both ways. “The talks will cover security issues, including security guarantees. These can only be mutual,” Peskov said on November 3, calling indivisible security “a cornerstone of our position”, TASS reported. On November 6 he said Russia had received no ideas from Europe on security guarantees, though any discussion of security would at some point be “impossible” without Europe, and accused European leaders of “persistent indecisiveness and a lack of readiness”, since they “haven’t even managed to decide who is authorized to speak on their behalf”, AP reported.
Brussels is playing down the odds. “There’s a very long way to go there because we haven’t seen much movement on that side,” European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said after hosting talks on post-war reconstruction and security guarantees on November 4-5. Berlin told Washington the same day that any agreement must have the consent of Nato partners: Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Trump discussed by phone the need to end the war quickly, government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said on November 6. Merz has also said that a meeting with Putin at the G20 summit in Miami in December is “not excluded”, Westfalenpost reported on November 9.
Glen Howard, president of the Saratoga Foundation, compared the risk of putting Nato’s posture on the table to the 1938 Munich agreement. “Since when does Russia get a say about the future of Nato and undoing the eastern flank?” he told RFE/RL.
The Nordic road map
The clearest picture of how the security track could fit with a Ukraine settlement came from the call that Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store made to Putin on October 27, with Kyiv’s and Washington’s approval. It was the first contact between Putin and pro-Ukraine European leaders since French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to him in July 2025, and it was designed as one step in a process meant to end in a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy.
The two leaders carried two messages from Kyiv: a call for a ceasefire and a proposal for a bilateral meeting at which Zelenskiy would discuss territorial and security issues with Putin, Stubb told Finnish public broadcaster Yle on October 31. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha put it more bluntly to Helsingin Sanomat. “We want this meeting, and we are ready for it,” he said. “Zelensky is ready to discuss the most difficult and sensitive issues, including the territorial question.”
That puts territory on the agenda of a leaders’ meeting for the first time, and Kyiv has tied it to security. Washington has revived its Donbas trade-off, which would have Kyiv give up the part of Donbas it holds for a demilitarised zone, and Moscow still demands the whole of Donetsk region.
Stubb set out the order of play. There is no need to rush and relations should be rebuilt in stages, he told Yle. “Hopefully Abu Dhabi produces the kind of results that would make Zelenskiy and Putin want to meet,” he said.
Moscow has accepted the channel on its own terms. Putin would always pick up the phone if the two leaders called again, Ushakov told Zvezda television on October 29, adding that Putin would meet Zelenskiy only on Russian territory, and the Kremlin says the Abu Dhabi round stays three-way. The call also split European capitals: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was “very sceptical” of the initiative, while Merz used Zelenskiy’s visit to Berlin to insist that Europe needs a seat once the talks move up a level.
The steps are now laid out: working-level security talks in Abu Dhabi, a Putin-Zelenskiy meeting if they produce results, and then the wider European format Kushner wants, built on a council that Nato shut down 12 years ago. Europe’s leaders meet in Berlin on November 19, and EU leaders take up Ukraine’s 2027 funding on November 26-27, after the first round has shown whether Moscow wants a ceasefire or only the security deal.