Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Ukraine, the United States and Russia had agreed to hold a three-way meeting of negotiating teams in the first half of November, but that whether it happens “all depends on the Russians.”
Zelenskyy said he and his team had just spoken with President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about “the results of the meetings in Oslo and St. Petersburg, and how we can move diplomacy forward this November,” he wrote in a post on X sharing video of his remote address to the Hudson Institute in Washington.
“We have an agreement to hold a trilateral meeting – Ukraine, America, and Russia – at the team level. The plan is to meet in the first half of November. We are ready to meet any day – even tomorrow. But it all depends on the Russians,” Zelenskyy wrote, quoting the address.
He opened the address by apologizing for arriving late, saying the call with the U.S. envoys took place “just before our meeting here,” according to the Ukrainian presidency’s transcript.
Zelenskyy blamed Moscow for the failure of an earlier round. “We expected a trilateral meeting this October, too. But it didn’t happen – because the Russians came up with another reason not to meet,” he said.
The Kremlin has given a different account. After Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Oct. 21, presidential aide Yury Ushakov said the planned resumption of talks “immediately after the elections to the State Duma was thwarted by the Ukrainian regime itself,” citing Ukrainian strikes on the main voting day, according to a Kremlin readout. Ushakov said Putin told Witkoff that Russia was ready “in principle” to resume trilateral talks around Nov. 10, and that Kushner, who could not travel for health reasons, joined by video link.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the talks “are scheduled for the first half of November in Abu Dhabi” and “will be held in a trilateral format,” according to Russian state news agency TASS. He said the agenda would center on security for Russia and Ukraine after a settlement is reached.
Zelenskyy said in the post that U.S. involvement was essential. “Can they happen without America or without American pressure on Russia? Probably not. That’s why we are really counting on America to keep this a priority at every level,” he wrote.
He also called for the talks to move beyond negotiators. “We need to move from technical-level trilateral talks to a meeting of the leaders – because the key issues can only be settled at that level,” he wrote. In the address, he added that “Europe must also be part of this conversation.”
Witkoff wrote after the St. Petersburg meeting that the process “will continue with trilateral talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine at the technical level,” in a post on his official account. He did not give a date or venue.
Zelenskyy’s statement that Russia “came up with another reason not to meet” is his characterization; the Kremlin blames Ukrainian strikes for the delay, and neither account has been independently verified. On the record, Kyiv and Moscow both say a team-level meeting is planned for the first half of November, and the Kremlin has named Abu Dhabi as the venue. Neither Witkoff, Kushner nor the White House had publicly responded to Zelenskyy’s remarks as of Saturday, and the Kremlin had not addressed his comments directly.