Every time peace talks come back, you hear the same thing on the news. Maps, lines, who gets which town. And it can start sounding like two guys arguing over a piece of land in a property deal. Volodymyr Zelenskyy clearly noticed that too.
Speaking to reporters in Denmark late on 10 November 2026, Ukraine’s president warned that his country “was not real estate,” according to CNBC. He said it while US, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were sitting across a table in Abu Dhabi, and as the second and final day of those talks got underway.
He also said he was “happy” with what he was hearing from the room. So it’s a mixed message. Good mood about the talks, hard line on land.
What’s happening in Abu Dhabi
The United Arab Emirates hosted two days of US-brokered talks on 10 and 11 November. It’s the first time the three sides sat down together since February, when the first trilateral round happened in Geneva, ABC News reports. Nine months is a long gap, and a lot happened on the battlefield in between.
Here’s who was in the room:
- United States: special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. NATO’s top commander, US Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, also took part. Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped it because he was at the G7 meeting in Paris.
- Ukraine: Rustem Umerov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, led the team. With him were Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Presidential Office, and David Arakhamia, who leads Zelenskyy’s party in parliament.
- Russia: Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky led the delegation, with GRU military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov.
- UAE: Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was pictured at the talks, per Kyiv Post.
Neither Zelenskyy nor Vladimir Putin went. Zelenskyy was in Copenhagen, where he spoke at the University of Copenhagen about the first day.
Before the three-way meeting, Ukraine’s team met security advisers from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the EU and NATO. Russia had no contact with the Europeans at all. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said none was planned, according to Reuters.
Why “not real estate” hits a nerve
The land question is the hardest part, and everyone knows it.
Putin wants Ukraine to pull out of all of Donbas before any deal. Reuters says there has been “no sign publicly” that he will drop that demand. Moscow also claims the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, which it annexed on paper in September 2022 but never fully captured. Russian forces hold about a fifth of Ukraine today, Crimea included.
Zelenskyy’s answer hasn’t changed. He won’t hand over land Russia doesn’t even control.
Then you have Trump. He told reporters Ukraine would end up with “a little bit different shape,” per ABC. So when Zelenskyy says his country is not real estate, it lands in a conversation where the US president, a former property developer, is talking about Ukraine’s borders changing. Zelenskyy did not name Trump in the part of his remarks that was reported. But you can see why the phrase got picked up.
An unnamed US official told Al Jazeera that both sides showed “some flexibility” on occupied land in private. That official also said any land deal would most likely come last, after security is sorted out.
What they actually talked about
Less map drawing than you’d think, at least on day one.
Zelenskyy said the first day was “constructive and quite substantive.” He said the talks were largely about humanitarian issues: prisoner exchanges, getting civilians back from captivity and returning Ukrainian children taken to Russia, per PBS.
The main topics:
- A prisoner swap. This is the most likely real result. Kyiv Post says Zelenskyy mentioned proposals of 1,000 for 1,000 or 1,500 for 1,500. A senior Ukrainian official told AP a “large scale prisoner swap” was on the table, with details to come.
- Security guarantees. Both days covered how to keep Ukraine safe after a deal. The US official quoted by Al Jazeera described a possible defence commitment modelled on NATO’s Article 5.
- A ceasefire. Ukraine wants one first. Russia doesn’t. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “rejected the notion of a truce,” Reuters reports, and UA.News says Russia’s delegation refused to discuss it, saying it had no authority to.
- Energy and the Black Sea. Day two, per Ukrainian media sources cited by Kyiv Post, included energy issues and Black Sea security.
Umerov summed up Ukraine’s position simply: “Our people are waiting to end this war. And we hope that we will achieve the lasting peace for Ukraine.”
Medinsky said he hoped the meeting would “advance on the path towards peace in the interests of the people of Russia and the people of Ukraine.”
Kushner put out a short statement after day one: “We are encouraged by the constructive discussions today.”
The war didn’t pause for the talks
While the delegations flew in, the strikes kept going. Overnight into 10 November, Russia launched 162 drones and one ballistic missile at Ukraine, Ukraine’s air force said. Russia said it shot down 155 Ukrainian drones over eight regions and Crimea the same night.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said Russia hit six large electricity substations in four central regions. That’s the kind of thing that makes a “talks went well” headline feel strange if you live in Ukraine and your power just went off.
Nobody expects a deal this week
Even the people who like the talks are careful.
Rubio said the Abu Dhabi talks looked “very productive,” but added: “It’s not like something that’s on the verge of being solved in the next 24 hours.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told ZDF, “I don’t have overly high expectations.”
The analysts are blunter. Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at RAND, told ABC: “They’re not going to come to some radically more ambitious agreement given there hasn’t been any conversation for the past nine months.” Ilya Timtchenko of the Center for European Policy Analysis told Al Jazeera, “you’re not really going to be seeing any deal.”
Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said he has “absolutely no hopes” for the talks beyond prisoner swaps. He told ABC that Putin’s demands “mean surrender for Ukraine.”
Trump sounds more upbeat. “I believe that that war is going to end and it’s going to end soon,” he told CBS’s 60 Minutes. There’s also a deadline nobody says out loud: Democrats won the midterms and take over Congress in January, and Timtchenko thinks Washington may push for something before then.
What happens next
Day two ended on 11 November without a deal. It ran just under two hours, behind closed doors, Kyiv Post reports.
The next stop is Moscow. UA.News reports Kushner said on 11 November that he and Witkoff would fly there to meet Putin. Zelenskyy is not expecting much: “The Americans flew to Putin with concrete proposals… I don’t really believe that will happen, but there is hope,” he said, talking about whether they’d come back with concrete answers.
Europe is still trying to work out who speaks for it. Zelenskyy wants that settled by the end of November, ideally at the 19 November coalition-of-the-willing meeting in Germany, according to Kyiv Post. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has already said it won’t be her.
So if you’re watching for one thing from this round, watch the prisoner swap. That’s the result most people on both sides think can actually happen. The land question, the one Zelenskyy is pushing back on, is being left for last.
FAQ
What did Zelenskyy mean by Ukraine is “not real estate”? He told reporters in Denmark on 10 November 2026 that his country “was not real estate,” per CNBC. He has refused to give up land Russia doesn’t control, and the remark came while Russia keeps demanding all of Donbas.
Who is at the Abu Dhabi peace talks? The US sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Ukraine sent Rustem Umerov, Kyrylo Budanov and David Arakhamia. Russia sent Vladimir Medinsky, Igor Kostyukov and Sergei Ryabkov. The UAE hosted.
Did Zelenskyy or Putin attend? No. Neither leader went to Abu Dhabi.
Was a deal reached in Abu Dhabi? No. The talks ended on 11 November with no deal announced. A prisoner swap is the most likely outcome so far.
What happens after Abu Dhabi? Kushner and Witkoff are heading to Moscow to meet Putin, per UA.News. European countries meet in Germany on 19 November to decide who represents Europe in future talks.
