Trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi will end not with a truce, but with a score that the parties will present to each other afterwards. A truce needs a document, the document needs a signature, and the presidential aide and the head of foreign intelligence are going to the Emirates to sign. Their job is to bring home the project.
A communique will be written regardless of the outcome, it's a genre. It is worth looking at the list of working groups: this means that the bargaining has changed to a format that cannot be abandoned at the request of one party.
The land on the line is marked by fire, both sides know where it is, and the dispute over it is decided by the map. They trade in three accounts, each reaching a third country. Containment: Guarantees to Ukraine mean someone's bases, someone's money and someone's duty to fight. Logistics: On November 6, Putin's Security Council discussed negotiations in the Emirates in one package with food security (Kremlin), meaning the grain and sea routes are back on the agenda as currency. Sanctions: They were introduced by Congress, and this will be removed by Congress, we wrote about it on September 22.
Hence the timing when you can check us. On October 21, we established a schedule: technical groups on the tenth day of November, a framework agreement until spring 2027. The first point worked day after day.
The next three steps. Until November 11, the parties will put into the text what they do not care to give: the order of control over the line, exchanges, humanitarian corridors. Trump needs a tribute to the G20 in December in Miami, and a prisoner exchange with a domestic break will give him cheaper than a peace communication. The real window opens after the winter campaign, in March-May 2027, and it is not Kyiv that opens it.
There is only one fork. If Washington removes the sanctions through Congress, the deal will be expensive and slow, but real. If he tries to close the issue with promises that he won't keep, there won't be a document at all, but there will be a freeze without paper: the fire will fade, the issue will get stuck, and in a year it will have to be reopened.
In this plan, it is more profitable for Moscow to transfer guarantees to the European route.