ABU DHABI -- The Trump administration is putting a longstanding Russian demand at the heart of its latest push to end the war in Ukraine: renegotiating pan-European security in ways the Kremlin hopes will give it more influence in the region.
Ahead of meetings in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday involving American, Russian, Ukrainian and European negotiators, U.S. officials said work on a ceasefire in Ukraine must proceed alongside discussions about Europe's future security arrangements.
The White House's approach is causing alarm in many European governments, which believe Russia's real goal is to rebuild a sphere of influence in Europe's east, giving it a say over other countries' defense and security policies.
That would rewrite Europe's post-Cold War order, sponsored by the U.S. under both Republican and Democratic presidents, that guaranteed all countries' sovereignty, including their freedom to choose their own alliances, while deepening arms control agreements.
Russia signed up to those principles in a series of treaties in the 1990s, but under President Vladimir Putin it has turned instead to a massive military buildup, territorial expansion and trying to restore its political sway over Ukraine and other neighbors.
Putin has for years demanded restrictions on Western military deployments in Europe and on countries' freedom to choose their own alliances. In late 2021, shortly before launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin demanded an effective rollback of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in countries that were formerly Soviet satellites or part of the Soviet Union, such as Poland and the Baltic states.
Moscow also demanded a ban on admitting any new members to NATO, and the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. Washington and NATO rejected those demands. Putin has said no peace deal can be reached without addressing what he calls the conflict's "root causes," including NATO's expansion.
The new White House approach risks turning Russia's invasion of Ukraine into an opportunity for Moscow to win concessions on Europe's defenses that it couldn't obtain until now, European officials and analysts say.
President Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have sought to mediate between Russia and Ukraine since last year. But with Putin regularly reaffirming his original war aims of subjugating Ukraine, and Kyiv refusing to capitulate, no end to the war is in sight.
Since Trump returned to the White House, the U.S. position has moved significantly as his administration has offered a series of concessions and inducements to Moscow, arguing that this would encourage Putin to compromise.
The U.S. had previously pressed Ukraine to surrender territory in its east that Russia has been unable to conquer, pressured Kyiv to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, and offered Moscow a series of potential energy and other economic deals.
In recent weeks, Kushner and Witkoff have argued that expanding the scope of a peace deal to encompass a rethink of European security arrangements would increase the chances of success.
U.S. officials have said in recent days that the long war in Ukraine shows that Europe's existing security arrangements haven't worked well. "We have to build something new that works today," one U.S. official said on Monday.
Trump said last week that he envisioned a broad agreement with Moscow that might involve all of Europe. "It's going to be a big, beautiful agreement, and everyone's going to be thrilled," he told reporters in the White House.
Moscow has welcomed Washington's approach. "The idea of formulating clear parameters for the future security architecture, and only then moving on to resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict itself, is absolutely reasonable," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
European policymakers have pushed back. "We already have a European security architecture in place," the European Union's foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday. "The problem is that Russia is not respecting these agreements."
Witkoff and Kushner sounded a note closer to the European and previous U.S. position on Tuesday. In a joint statement with European allies and Ukraine on Tuesday, they said they were discussing "how to build upon existing European security institutions and agreements."
U.S. officials stress that NATO would remain central to European defense and countries would retain independent decision-making. Washington is working on guarantees for Ukraine resembling NATO's collective defense, subject to Trump's approval.
"For decades, U.S. policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations has emphasized that Russia should have a voice but not a veto about the security landscape in Europe," said Andrew Weiss, a former U.S. national-security official and a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. "No wonder the Ukrainians and the Europeans are deeply worried about deals possibly being cut behind their backs."
Officials from all sides have played down the chances of a breakthrough at the two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi. Talks concluded Tuesday after around five hours.
After the first day of talks closed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X that he was briefed by his negotiators that Tuesday's three-way talks discussed humanitarian issues, security guarantees and steps for de-escalating the conflict. He said any security guarantees offered to Ukraine must be effective.
"Real tools are needed to block any recurrence of the war," he said.
U.S. officials said the talks are intended to identify remaining disagreements and lay the groundwork for further negotiations. Kremlin foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov has described the meeting as a "trial run" to see if talks are making any progress from Russia's perspective.
European officials believe the Kremlin has no intention of ending the war, noting intensifying Russian attacks on Ukraine and Putin's unchanged war aims.
But with the U.S. pushing for discussions about their continent's security arrangements, European countries want to be at the table to prevent agreements being imposed on them, senior diplomats said.
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