Putin is not ready to make peace in Abu Dhabi

The humanitarian breakthrough in Oleshky has not changed Moscow’s calculations. Putin believes he can outlast Western support for Ukraine. As the Russian-Ukrainian war, which long ago entered a phase of attrition, grinds on, Russia, Ukraine and the United States began a new round of US-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, on November 10.

The talks are scheduled to continue on November 11. The talks follow a successful humanitarian operation in Oleshky, a southern Ukrainian town that has been occupied by Russian forces since 2022. Starting in December 2025, Oleshky experienced a food crisis that worsened dramatically in the summer of this year.

Over the years under Russian occupation, its population declined from 25,000 to 2,000 people, and the food crisis threatened the survival of those who remained. In the summer, however, Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services agreed to work on a local ceasefire in order to evacuate Oleshky’s inhabitants – if they wanted to leave – either to Ukraine or to Russia.