High-level delegations from Russia and Ukraine opened a two-day session today in Abu Dhabi with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner participating along with the host, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grynkewich. The meetings lasted for 4.5 hours with the Russian and Ukrainian delegations speaking in Russian. They agreed to resume tomorrow. The head of Ukraine’s delegation, Foreign Intelligence Service chief Rustem Umerov, said that they were authorized to discuss all issues related to ending the conflict.

Moscow’s team, headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, has made it clear that, only in the context of “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine,” could a ceasefire and permanent peace be accomplished. As announced by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier, the Russian delegation has been upgraded over last year’s talks with the inclusion of Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and Alexei Komkov, a senior Federal Security Service (FSB) department head. Two more Armed Forces General Staff officers, as well as specialists from the FSB and the Foreign Ministry, are present as experts, TASS reported.

Yesterday and today, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took every opportunity to confirm and emphasize what Peskov had also announced: that the talks will focus on security guarantees for all parties involved, and that this agenda was an American idea that Moscow had accepted. TASS reported, from its sources, that the talks will address the creation of a new continental security system for the post-conflict period: “[T]he settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, which is a critically important issue, is just one item in the broad discussion, subordinate to the main goal of creating a comprehensive and indivisible security architecture for the entire continent.”