Past talks involving Russia and Ukraine have yielded little progress toward peace

Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are to meet Tuesday (November 10, 2026) and Wednesday (November 11) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in the latest bid to end the war. Key developments from past sessions since Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor on Feb.

24, 2022: Feb. 28, 2022: Ukrainian and Russian delegations meet in neighboring Belarus for the first time after the invasion. Talks continue for two weeks, deciding only on humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians.

March 10, 2022: Russian and Ukrainian Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Dmytro Kuleba meet in Antalya, Turkiye. March 21, 2022: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an idea rebuffed by Lavrov.

March 28-30, 2022: Delegations meet in Istanbul to work on a draft peace agreement. Moscow says it's willing to “fundamentally cut back” military activity near Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv; Ukraine says it's open to discussing neutral status for Ukraine if its security is backed by other nations.

April 7, 2022: Lavrov rejects a Ukrainian proposal as “unacceptable," saying Kyiv has walked back on an agreement to exempt the Crimean Peninsula from wider Ukrainian security guarantees. Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.

April 26, 2022: UN Secretary-General António Guterres visits Russia to discuss ending the war. May 13, 2022: U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin calls his Russian counterpart, their first contact since the war began. July 22, 2022: Russia and Ukraine, with mediation by Turkiye and the UN, agree to unblock grain supplies stuck in Ukraine's Black Sea ports.

Russia withdraws from the deal a year later. Sept. 30, 2022: Russia illegally annexes the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, even though it doesn't fully control any of them. Ukraine responds by applying to join NATO and by enacting a decree that declares negotiations with Putin “impossible.” Nov.

15, 2022: Zelenskyy unveils a 10-point peace plan at the G20 summit in Indonesia. June 16-17, 2023: African leaders travel to Kyiv and St. Petersburg on a peace mission, without success. June 25, 2023: Officials from 15 countries, including the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and several representatives from the European Union, meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss Zelenskyy's peace plan.

Aug. 5-6, 2023: Two days of discussions on the war begin in Saudi Arabia with delegates from 40 countries, including China, India, South Africa and Brazil, but not Russia. No joint statements are issued. Oct. 28-29, 2023: Delegates from 65 countries meet in Malta to continue talks on Zelenskyy's peace plan.

Russia, which dismissed the talks, was not invited. China, though invited, did not participate. June 15-16, 2024: Representatives of 92 nations meet in Nidwalden, Switzerland, to discuss Ukraine's peace plan, but a consensus remains elusive.

The summit's final statement is backed by most — but not all — participants. Dec. 7, 2024: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump travels to Paris and meets Zelenskyy and other European leaders.