Trump sees willingness to end Ukraine war as peace talks resume

President Donald Trump said both Russia and Ukraine are showing growing willingness to end the war, as officials from the two countries headed to Abu Dhabi for the first peace talks since February, CNBC reported.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said both sides were battle-weary more than four and a half years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. “We’re also seeing a very strong inclination to end Russia and Ukraine,” Trump said, adding that “we’re involved in that because I want to see people stop getting killed again.”

His comments followed a U.S. official’s assessment that Moscow and Kyiv were privately showing some flexibility over a possible exchange of territory, according to Reuters. A senior Ukrainian official rejected the suggestion that Kyiv was considering territorial concessions, telling Reuters that any discussion of territory would have to take place between national leaders and be accompanied by security guarantees.

Russia has publicly maintained its demand that Ukraine surrender the entire eastern Donbas region, including territory Moscow has not captured. The gap between Russia’s public position and the private flexibility that U.S. officials describe is the gap that any deal would have to bridge. Closing it requires either a Russian concession that contradicts years of battlefield rhetoric or a Ukrainian concession that crosses a line Zelenskyy has said he will not cross.

William Courtney, former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia and an adjunct senior fellow at RAND, told CNBC that there are “no signs thus far” that the Kremlin is willing to negotiate seriously toward a ceasefire. He called a ceasefire the logical first step. Ukraine has proposed a ceasefire along the current battle line, which would accept Russia’s de facto control of occupied territory without formally recognizing it. Courtney called that a concession by Kyiv and said it was puzzling that Trump stopped backing the proposal after Putin objected at their Alaska meeting last year.

Courtney pointed to Russia’s continued missile and drone attacks and its efforts to destroy bridges over the Dnieper River as evidence that Moscow’s aims toward Ukraine have not changed. He said serious talks would be unlikely without a shift in Russia’s objectives or on the battlefield. That is the structural problem: the diplomacy is running ahead of the military situation. Russia is still attacking. Ukraine is still defending. Talks can begin, but they cannot conclude until one side decides the cost of continuing exceeds the cost of stopping.

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are leading Washington’s mediation efforts. Russia has said Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky will serve as Moscow’s chief negotiator at the Abu Dhabi talks, where postwar security guarantees for Ukraine are expected to feature prominently. Courtney said such guarantees are issues for later, after a ceasefire has been agreed on. Putting security guarantees on the table before a ceasefire is in place puts the cart ahead of the horse, and it gives Russia an opening to demand concessions on the ceasefire in exchange for vague promises about postwar arrangements.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that discussions had advanced on a possible postwar security framework for Ukraine and Europe. “Nothing’s been finalized yet, and maybe some progress can be made in Abu Dhabi,” Rubio said. The secretary’s tone was more cautious than the president’s, which is the tone diplomats use when they know the talks could fail.

In his nightly address Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Washington to convince Russia to end the war and said recent Ukrainian battlefield gains and mounting Russian losses had improved Kyiv’s bargaining power. The argument is that Russia is weakened and more likely to concede now than later. The counterargument is that Russia has shown no willingness to concede at any point in the war, regardless of losses.

The renewed diplomacy comes amid continued fighting and mounting questions over the scale of Russia’s wartime losses. Belarusian Cyber Partisans, an opposition-linked hacker group, said its analysis of data it claims was obtained from Russia’s state statistics agency identified 393,881 deaths linked to military operations between 2022 and August 2026. The group acknowledged the figure could include civilians and deaths connected to other conflicts. Rosstat has acknowledged it was targeted in cyberattacks but denied its databases were compromised, according to the Russian media outlet Kommersant. The hackers’ claims have not been independently verified.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated separately that 400,000 to 450,000 Russian military personnel were killed between February 2022 and June 2026. At the upper end, that would be more than nine times the combined Soviet and Russian military fatalities in wars since World War II. The Moscow Times, citing its own analysis of leaked records, reported that roughly 450,000 war-related deaths would make the conflict Russia’s fourth most common cause of death since 2022. The numbers are staggering, and they raise a question that the Abu Dhabi talks will not answer: how many more losses is Russia willing to absorb?

What I think

The gap between Trump’s optimism and Courtney’s skepticism is the story. Trump sees “a very strong inclination” to end the war. Courtney sees “no signs thus far” that the Kremlin will negotiate seriously. Both are looking at the same situation and reaching opposite conclusions. The difference is that Trump is listening to what Russia says in private, and Courtney is watching what Russia does on the battlefield. In war, what armies do is more reliable than what diplomats say.

The battlefield is still active. Russia is firing missiles and drones and trying to destroy bridges over the Dnieper. Those are not the actions of a country preparing for peace. They are the actions of a country trying to improve its position before talks, or of a country that has no intention of stopping. Courtney’s point about the ceasefire proposal is the most telling: Ukraine offered to freeze the line of contact, which would leave Russia in control of what it has taken without formal recognition. That is a real concession. Putin rejected it, and Trump stopped pushing it. If the U.S. is not willing to press for a ceasefire as the first step, the Abu Dhabi talks are unlikely to produce one.

The loss numbers are staggering. The CSIS estimate of 400,000 to 450,000 Russian military killed is more than nine times the combined Soviet and Russian military fatalities in all wars since World War II. Russia is losing soldiers at a rate that would have ended any other country’s war. The fact that it has not ended this one tells you something about how the Kremlin calculates the cost of war versus the cost of stopping. Putin appears to believe that he can absorb the losses and that time is on his side. The Abu Dhabi talks will test that belief.

Zelenskyy’s claim that Ukrainian gains and Russian losses have improved Kyiv’s bargaining power is the argument for negotiating now. If Ukraine is in a stronger position, it can extract better terms. But the counterargument is that Russia’s willingness to talk is a sign of weakness, and that waiting longer produces even better terms. The risk of waiting is that the war escalates, the losses mount, and the political will to negotiate erodes on both sides. The Abu Dhabi talks are the first test of whether the diplomatic track can move faster than the battlefield. If they produce a ceasefire, the war enters a new phase. If they do not, the fighting continues and the losses keep climbing.