US says Moscow and Kyiv show unofficial flexibility on Donetsk ahead of talks in Abu Dhabi

Unofficial flexibility on Donetsk

Russia and Ukraine, while keeping their public positions unchanged, are showing a certain degree of 'flexibility' on the question of the future of Donetsk region, a US official said on Monday on condition of anonymity. According to him, publicly Russia demands the entire Donetsk region, while Ukraine insists on the line of contact, but privately both sides have shown some movement. 'We are going to start discussing what that could look like,' he added (Anadolu).

Talks in Abu Dhabi and the link to security

Representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the US are gathering in Abu Dhabi for a new round of trilateral peace talks starting Tuesday. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, NATO and the EU will also join the discussions. According to the US official, Washington has a list of 'seven or eight issues,' but no resolution is expected in Abu Dhabi — the goal is to restart the process. He emphasized that the territorial question, including Donetsk, will not be settled until the postwar security architecture is defined: 'We cannot finish one without the other.' In his assessment, this is the first time he feels a 'real desire on the Russian side to end' the conflict is visible (Anadolu).

NATO-style security guarantees

The US, according to the official, has asked Russia to allow Washington to provide Ukraine with security guarantees modeled on NATO Articles 4 and 5, so that the alliance itself would offer similar guarantees. 'What they would get would be, in effect, very much like NATO,' he noted. The decision rests with President Donald Trump: according to the official, President Volodymyr Zelensky must ask for it, and Trump must agree. He also did not rule out that envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner may soon travel again for meetings with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky (Anadolu).

Context of previous rounds

The most recent US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine took place earlier this year: three rounds were held in January and February in Abu Dhabi and Geneva. The question of security guarantees has been raised before: in August 2025, after the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, Witkoff said Russia had agreed to the US and European countries providing Ukraine with Article 5-type guarantees, and in December, after talks in Berlin, US officials reported that Washington had offered such guarantees to Kyiv. Everything said about the sides' 'flexibility' is the assessment of a single anonymous American official, not confirmed statements from Moscow and Kyiv themselves, whose public positions, by his own account, remain unchanged.