On November 11, the second day of talks in Abu Dhabi turned to territory. Washington formally asked Moscow to accept an "Article 4 and an Article 5-like security guarantee" for Ukraine, a senior US official told reporters on November 9. US officials tie the territorial question to that guarantee and want the two settled together. The first day on November 10 focused on ceasefire monitoring and postwar security arrangements. Neither half of this trade is defined yet. Nobody has said what a "Nato-like" pledge would oblige the US and Europe to do if Russia attacked again. Kyiv is being asked to give up the fortress cities it still holds in Donetsk region for a currently very vague promise.
The Vague Promise
US envoy Jared Kushner, who leads Washington’s mediation with special envoy Steve Witkoff, said the aim was a "sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine and lasting peace across Europe." He wrote on X on November 10 that he and Witkoff believe the Russian president is ready for peace "under the right conditions." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made the vagueness of the offer his main objection. In a post on X, he set out the exchange: "Can you tell me what it means? What security? Nato?" The answer was "Not Nato, but similar to Nato." Zelenskiy countered that nobody trusts Putin to stop if they leave Donbas. He warned that Russia will pause, then return in one, two, or five years. Any guarantee must be "ironclad," a word Moscow used in January 2022 when Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov demanded guarantees that Ukraine would never join NATO. Ryabkov is in Russia’s delegation in Abu Dhabi now. The US refused those guarantees then, and the war started a month later.
Kyiv worries the guarantee will bundle into a wider deal over Europe. Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics, wrote on X that a new European security architecture is on the American agenda. He called it dangerous because it mirrors an idea Putin raised with Biden in 2021. Witkoff said after a meeting on November 10 that any agreement must respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and include credible security guarantees. That meeting included the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the European Commission, and NATO. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio left open whether the guarantee would model Article 5. He noted the difficulty of winning Senate approval and said it must deter another attack while remaining acceptable to Moscow. Eric Ciaramella, writing for RUSI on November 10, argued no country has been willing to send combat forces to Ukraine. He stated that Article 5 is credible because of forward-deployed troops and integrated command, not the treaty text. He advised partners to focus on a strong Ukrainian military instead of recreating Article 5.
Territory and Pressure
US negotiators have proposed redrawing the administrative boundaries of Donetsk and Luhansk regions so Russia could declare it took the whole Donbas without capturing the cities Ukraine still holds. The Economist reported this based on people involved in the talks. It is not clear if this is a formal proposal. Russia holds most of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk region. Zelenskiy confirmed in October that Washington also proposed a buffer zone on both sides of the line of contact. Both sides have shown some flexibility in private, which is new. A US official told Reuters on November 10 that any territorial deal likely comes at the end of negotiations during a mooted meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy. Ukraine’s UN ambassador Andriy Melnyk told the Security Council on November 9 that Zelenskiy was ready to meet Putin "anywhere except Moscow." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he is willing to host the meeting again. Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary leader of the ruling Servant of the People party, said there are only "expectations" for next steps, not a breakthrough in Abu Dhabi.
Both sides are turning the military torque while their envoys fence. Russia struck Ukraine’s energy and oil and gas sectors 128 times between November 2 and November 8, up from 94 times the week before, First Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said on November 9. Strikes on November 7-8 forced emergency power cuts in Kyiv and left more than 600,000 customers without electricity in Dnipropetrovsk region. Putin threatened to completely destroy Ukraine’s bridges, ports, railways, and power plants by next year unless Kyiv accepts Moscow’s ceasefire terms, the Financial Times reported. Zelenskiy says battlefield gains strengthen his hand. Operation Vivaldi, the 3rd Army Corps counteroffensive near Lyman, retaking 176 sq km by late September pushed Russian troops back from the Donbas fortress belt. Kyiv’s defence ministry put Russian personnel losses at 54,400 in October alone, the highest monthly figure since the full-scale invasion began.
