Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine will resume in Abu Dhabi next week with the White House pushing a potential Trump-Putin-Xi summit — the first real pressure to end a war that has burned through American tax dollars for nearly five years while the Beltway class insisted negotiation was impossible.
The Kremlin confirmed Tuesday that Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky will lead Moscow's delegation at the Nov. 10-11 talks, mediated by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff. The discussions will focus on security arrangements, de-escalation, and humanitarian issues. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said Russia hopes to finalize plans for a trilateral meeting between Putin, Trump, and Xi Jinping — without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the table.
That exclusion has Zelenskyy scrambling. "It can be acceptable only when we are at the table of negotiations," he said on Oct. 20, adding: "Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine." Zelenskyy's objection is understandable on its face, but the subtext is clear: Kyiv's government, sustained by U.S. funding, fears losing its veto over any settlement that doesn't guarantee continued Western backing.
Meanwhile, the most striking peace initiative isn't coming from the State Department or the Pentagon — it's coming from the First Lady. Melania Trump will host Russian and Ukrainian representatives at the White House on Thursday to discuss a local ceasefire in Kherson, after brokering a six-day pause in hostilities in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky to allow civilian evacuations. The White House called the summit "an extraordinary moment in American history."
Ukraine accused Russia of using that ceasefire to reinforce military positions — a claim worth tracking but one that applies equally to every humanitarian pause in every war ever fought.
CNBC framed the story around rising U.S.-Ukraine tensions and questioned Washington's "reliability" as Kyiv's military partner — as if the American promise to underwrite an open-ended European land war was some kind of sacred contract. Al-Monitor, by contrast, buried the Melania Trump angle entirely but provided the context CNBC omitted: the last U.S.-mediated peace talks collapsed in February, when the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran. Funny how that works — every time the war machine opens a new front, diplomacy dies.
Witkoff also said U.S. negotiators will meet European and NATO officials in Brussels this week to discuss post-war security guarantees and Ukraine's reconstruction. Translation: the same alliance that kept this war going is already jockeying to lock in long-term spending commitments before peace can break out.
The question now is whether the Trump administration can force a settlement past an establishment that has built an entire industry around keeping this conflict alive — and whether American taxpayers will finally get a say in how their money gets spent.
