In brief
Negotiations in Oslo ended in a lukewarm assessment from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, followed by a terse rejection from Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov in St Petersburg. The Kremlin plans only technical talks in Abu Dhabi, while Trump’s partial sanctions rollback and diesel deal with Moscow further soften Moscow’s pressure. Despite the promise of a U.S.–Russia–Ukraine trilateral summit, observers consider it unlikely, instead pointing to a possible Putin‑Trump‑Xi meeting at next month’s APEC summit. With the war entering its fifth year, the diplomatic outreach appears more cosmetic than substantive.
In Oslo, prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre welcomed a meeting that could have brought together Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump. The discussion was later followed by a session in St Petersburg where Putin’s foreign‑policy aide Yuri Ushakov bluntly dismissed the talks as “not useful.”
Despite the Berlin‑climate “good and constructive” scene, the Kremlin signals that it will only resume technical conversations with the U.S. and Ukraine next month in Abu Dhabi. Even if a real summit were to take place, the Russian leader shows no inclination to change policy over the winter.
U.S. sanctions have been partially rolled back, and Trump has even struck a diesel deal with Moscow. Those moves appear to ease pressure on Moscow, while the envoy’s own comment – that “there is still important work to do” – has done little to raise expectations. Russian media outlets attribute the “pause” in sanctions to the U.S. president’s willingness to demand Moscow’s terms.
Political observers warn that a Putin‑Zelensky‑Trump summit, while appealing in rhetoric, remains speculative. Instead, a more likely convergence may happen in Shanghai at the APEC summit, where leaders of the U.S., China and Russia could meet in a “new Yalta” style exchange, giving the Kremlin even more standing on the world stage.
With the war entering its fifth year, the diplomatic landscape appears stuck. The Oslo talks were a polite gesture and a thin veneer of cooperation, but the hard‑line realities on the ground and Russian strategic calculus hint that the war is far from a quick end.
