Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a trilateral meeting between officials from the United States, Ukraine and Russia will take place in November, with the Kremlin confirming that officials are preparing for the talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a trilateral meeting between officials from the United States, Ukraine and Russia will take place in November, in the latest attempt to restart stalled peace talks. Zelensky said Ukraine is ready for talks between technical groups, while renewing his argument that territorial questions can only be settled at leader level.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that officials are preparing for the meeting, and one report named the United Arab Emirates as the venue, following United States envoy Steve Witkoff's discussions with Zelensky in Oslo and a subsequent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The talks would follow a period in which the two sides have signalled readiness for another round of negotiations while fighting and long-range attacks continued.
Zelensky drew a line around what the technical groups can discuss. Territory, he said, is a red line that can be discussed exclusively at the level of leaders, while other issues fall within the technical groups' remit. Ukraine has long argued that Putin is the only person in Russia who can make major decisions to end the war, including on the fate of the nearly 20 percent of Ukraine that Russia occupies.
The announcement and the Kremlin's confirmation are both on the record, while the venue is a reported detail that has not been confirmed by all three capitals in the material checked. In the same interview, Zelensky said United States warnings about imminent Russian ballistic missile strikes, critical to Ukraine's air defences, had been fully restored, and that SpaceX's Starshield satellite internet had been working at high speed since early Saturday after being throttled earlier in October.
The gap between the two sides remains wide: Russia continues to demand control over Ukrainian territories it does not fully occupy, and Ukraine rejects surrendering territory it controls and insists on security guarantees. A local ceasefire for the occupied town of Oleshky, reported for October 27 to allow aid and evacuations, shows the same pattern in miniature: limited humanitarian steps are possible even while the core dispute is untouched. November's meeting will test whether technical talks can narrow anything before leaders are asked to decide.