Chapter 1
Both governments say they are ready to talk
Both governments say they are ready to talk, and for most of 2026 that readiness has been all there was. The two delegations have not sat down with each other since February 2026, when a US-brokered round in Geneva broke up ten days before American strikes on Iran pulled Washington's attention elsewhere. What replaced direct talks is a shuttle: American envoys carrying proposals between the two capitals, with spokesmen, intermediaries and would-be hosts filling the space in between. The shuttle now reaches both capitals in person, and the distance between the two positions still has not measurably closed.
Chapter 2
The dispute is not over whether to negotiate but over what negotiating…
The dispute is not over whether to negotiate but over what negotiating would mean. Russia's conditions have been stable for two years and are restated whenever they are asked for: withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson they still hold; abandonment of NATO accession; and, in the Foreign Ministry's standing formula, elimination of the war's "root causes", which it defines as the alliance's eastward expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in territory Kyiv controls. In July 2026 Moscow hardened further, withdrawing an earlier offer to return occupied slivers of Sumy and Kharkiv. In October Putin went further again, declaring a “security zone” along the border, in those same two regions, that he said would not be negotiated at all. Ukraine's position is that a ceasefire should freeze the current front line and that any settlement needs security guarantees credible enough to survive it; Kyiv has said repeatedly that it will not cede territory it holds. Both sides therefore profess readiness while attaching conditions the other treats as surrender.
Chapter 3
As the principals have stalled
As the principals have stalled, the number of parties trying to convene them has grown. The United States runs the only channel both capitals acknowledge, through the envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — though the one instrument of pressure it has visibly applied this summer was applied to Kyiv, when Vice President JD Vance asked Ukraine to stop striking tankers at Novorossiysk and Ukraine stopped. The pressure meant for Moscow went the other way: in October 2026 Trump waived the sanctions and tariffs Congress had passed a month earlier to push Russia toward a deal. Britain, France and Germany assembled a format of their own in August, less to mediate than to avoid being settled over, and their national security advisers have since taken seats inside the American round rather than beside it. Turkey has pressed for a maritime moratorium. Kazakhstan's president asked Putin in public to freeze the war. Beneath all of it runs a track of unofficial contacts — former officials meeting in Vienna and Baku under private convenors — which keeps a line open without committing anyone to anything.
Chapter 4
What remains unresolved is whether any of it converges
What remains unresolved is whether any of it converges. The narrower proposals — a mutual halt on attacks on Black Sea shipping, a moratorium on strikes against merchant vessels — test whether two sides that cannot agree a full settlement can agree a partial one, and both have been refused. A third, a mutual halt to strikes on energy infrastructure, was declared by Trump in October 2026 without either side’s signature; Ukraine held its fire for three days, Russia did not, and the truce ended within the week. The only partial measure both sides have actually observed is a short, reciprocal pause on striking the other's capital while negotiators were in the room. Zelenskyy's claim that trilateral negotiations will be held in the autumn of 2026 falls due on 30 November, and no session with delegations from all three governments has convened since he made it. The question underneath it all is the one Lavrov put plainly in August: not whether anyone will come, but what they will bring.
And now
Russia has added to its terms. On October 16 Putin said Russian forces were building a ‘security zone’ inside Ukraine along the border, and that Moscow did not plan to make it ‘a subject for potential peace negotiations’. The Kremlin puts the zone at 660 km of border. It lies in Sumy and Kharkiv regions, outside the four regions Russia already claims.
The same day Trump waived the sanctions and tariffs Congress passed in September, two days before they were due to take effect. Zelenskyy said the law ‘was supposed to impose truly effective pressure on Russia to bring this war to an end’.
On October 17 Zelenskyy said Washington had proposed a meeting of the three presidents — in the Gulf, at the G20 in Miami in December, or in Europe — and that neither Washington nor Moscow had confirmed it. Ukraine’s negotiator spoke to Kushner on October 16 to set up a meeting, which the Americans have signalled for next week. The New York Times reports, citing unnamed sources, that the envoys have also proposed reopening Russian gas transit through Ukraine as part of a settlement.
Where it stands today →