The Situation Room - November 11th

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I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Abu Dhabi Talks End With A Prisoner Swap Deal But No Ceasefire Or Territorial Breakthrough

• U.S. Charges Three Iran-Backed Operatives Over Nearly 20 Attacks, Including The RAF Fairford Plot

• Eisenkot’s Bloc Names Matan Kahana For Speaker And Forces A Vote To Unseat Likud’s Amir Ohana

Abu Dhabi Talks End With A Prisoner Swap Deal But No Ceasefire Or Territorial Breakthrough

_{By: Atlas}

Two days of U.S.-mediated talks among Russia, Ukraine and the United States ended Wednesday afternoon in Abu Dhabi (early Wednesday morning CST) with agreement in principle on a large-scale prisoner exchange and no breakthrough on a ceasefire or on territory.

It was the first round of direct negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow since a February meeting in Geneva that also failed to produce a settlement. The swap is the only concrete result so far, and the two sides left the Emirati capital still far apart on the issues that have kept the war going for nearly five years.

What the two sides agreed to

U.S. envoy Jared Kushner announced the exchange at a news conference after the talks, standing alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov.

“One of the positives is we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners, which we’re going to finalize the numbers tomorrow,” Kushner said.

Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, confirmed the agreement in remarks broadcast on Russian state television. He said the two sides had agreed in principle on a new large-scale exchange and that its specific parameters would be announced soon.

Neither delegation gave a firm size or date. Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that the exchange should take place in two to three weeks. On Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said negotiators had been discussing 1,000 prisoners from each side, possibly rising to 1,500 each.

Prisoner exchanges have been one of the few channels that have kept working through the war. Ukraine and Russia each freed 200 prisoners of war after the Geneva round, and they swapped 1,000 for 1,000 after talks in Istanbul in May 2025.

Where the talks stalled

Kushner called the meeting “very tough” but “productive,” and said it had been “a long way to get everyone back to the table.” He said progress had been made on a postwar security framework, including security guarantees, deconfliction and the monitoring of any future ceasefire, but acknowledged that “the territorial issues … will be the hardest.”

He also said there was “no trust between the sides,” which he called “to be expected after a conflict like this.” Kushner said a meeting between Zelenskyy and President Vladimir Putin “would be great,” but that “the Russians have said they would like to see more progress made before that happens.”

The core disputes remain where they were. Moscow has rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire, insisting on broader security arrangements first, while Zelenskyy has maintained that territorial questions must be settled at the level of leaders.

Davyd Arakhamia, the head of Zelenskyy’s faction in parliament and a member of Ukraine’s negotiating team, said there was “good momentum” toward a solution before the end of the year.

Europe outside the room

European officials were in Abu Dhabi but did not sit in the trilateral negotiations. Representatives of the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and NATO met separately with the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations on Tuesday.

Medinsky said his delegation had no contact with them. “No, we did not communicate with them. We don’t really understand in what capacity they are here,” he told reporters. He said Moscow had received no concrete proposals from European countries and questioned what there was to discuss, though he also said Russia was not opposed in principle to European participation.

Zelenskyy, who like Putin did not attend, pushed back after being briefed on the talks. “We believe that Europe must be represented at every stage of real diplomacy,” he wrote on X. He listed the outcome as a humanitarian arrangement on a new exchange, a discussion of security guarantees in which “the first step be ending this war,” and talk of “broader formats for further work involving the Europeans.”

Arakhamia said the next round should be multilateral rather than trilateral, with Europe at the table.

Kushner said the United States was working to “get the Europeans added to the format so that we can make this a multilateral format,” because postwar security in Europe is “a discussion where they have to be involved.” He said he hoped Putin would “give his blessing” to expanding the talks.

Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven, meeting in Paris on Monday and Tuesday, said in a joint statement that “negotiations on the future security in Europe must include the Europeans.”

Berlin’s opening to Moscow

In Berlin, a German government spokesperson said a conversation between Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Putin was possible.

“We have now reached an understanding in Abu Dhabi on the broad outlines. This understanding is now shared with the Russian president. And on that basis, talks may ensue,” the spokesperson told a regular news conference when asked whether Merz was ready to speak with Putin.

The spokesperson said the understanding had been reached among European, U.S. and Ukrainian officials, not with Russia, and that its principles would shape the next round.

Moscow offered its own ideas on security. Alexey Drobinin, a senior Russian diplomat, told a security conference in Moscow that guarantees for Russia could take the form of a collective defense alliance, political pledges not to aid each other’s adversaries, or bilateral nonaggression pacts, including with individual NATO members.

The gap on territory

Kushner said he and Witkoff would carry the Abu Dhabi discussions to Putin in Moscow and then brief Zelenskyy, saying Washington saw “some openings and some opportunities.”

Those openings have not yet reached the map. Russia continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw from the part of the eastern Donbas region still under Kyiv’s control.

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