What Vladimir Putin won in Abu Dhabi Ukraine peace talks

Jamie Dettmer is associate editor and a foreign affairs columnist for POLITICO. The Russians surely must be stoked with the outcome of the latest round of U.S.-brokered Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi. In the United Arab Emirates, Donald Trump’s envoys endorsed the Kremlin’s long-standing demand for everything to be negotiated in one fell swoop. And the U.S.

president subsequently raised the prospect of a “very big” deal involving all of Europe. The ambitious aim apparently now agreed between Washington and Moscow is to discuss all the issues together. And then to “find a pathway to settle them all at the same time,” Jared Kushner explained to reporters in a post-talks briefing in the UAE’s capital. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was representing the U.S.

in the talks, along with Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. So much for sequencing — generally seen by experienced diplomatic negotiators as crucial to any successful peace talks.