Security Guarantees and the European Fragmentation: The Background of the Abu Dhabi Negotiations.
The negotiations in Abu Dhabi should not be seen as a platform for an immediate breakthrough. And the point here is not pessimism, but a sober assessment of the situation: the positions of the parties are still far from a compromise. However, the value of this meeting lies elsewhere - in the agenda.
For the first time during the conflict, European security and comprehensive guarantees appear as one of the main issues in negotiations with the participation of the United States, Russia and Ukraine. These are the same questions that Moscow raised before the war, December 2021. The main Russian condition was a ban on further expansion of NATO, including Ukraine. All this was rejected by the Ju Biden administration. Five years later, the American side recognized general security guarantees as an early condition for an agreement and is prepared to discuss them. Kushner also did this, and it was confirmed in the Kremlin: the negotiations would focus on “peaceful security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine.”.
Why is the European Union absent from the negotiating table? Everything is explained quite simply and symbolically. Even before the 2022 war, Putin said that there is no point in negotiating with European leaders because they are not independent national leaders. When new territories became part of Russia, he openly called the enemy "Western globalist elites" represented by "the United States and its vassals", who "force other countries to live by foreign rules". It was about the European Union.
This is why Brussels was not given a seat at the table in Abu Dhabi. European officials are physically present in the Emirates, but their involvement remains outside the negotiation room. From Moscow's point of view, there is no one to talk to there - not because the Europeans are weak, but because, by this logic, they are not subjective. However, economically, the war was extremely bad for them - trade, energy resources, industrial cooperation.