Ukraine, the United States and Russia are preparing a trilateral meeting at team level to be held in under a week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday, following a 90-minute call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Zelensky announced the plan on X, according to la Repubblica, and said Kyiv's proposals for the negotiations were presented during the conversation. Kushner said on the same platform that Washington appreciated what he described as the constructive engagement of Zelensky and his team.
The call marks the most concrete step yet toward direct three-way contacts, though no date, location or delegation list has been confirmed by the parties themselves. Vatican News reported that the trilateral talks are expected in Abu Dhabi next week.
Why it matters
The announcement puts a timeline on diplomacy that until now has been described only in general terms. A team-level format involving all three capitals would be the first structured sitting of its kind in this war, and it would test whether the parties can agree on anything beyond the principle of talking.
Zelensky framed the pace as urgent. According to la Repubblica, he said the negotiations must move at full speed to end the war as quickly as possible, and he described peace as having no alternative. He also said postwar security guarantees must be genuinely unassailable — language that signals Kyiv intends to tie any settlement to enforceable protection rather than a ceasefire alone.
Kushner's public statement went further than a routine diplomatic courtesy. Writing after the call, he said the effort is aimed not only at stopping the fighting but at building the wider security architecture needed so that, once combat ends, it does not restart. He said the US is working hard with all sides toward a durable peace, according to la Repubblica.
Air defence tops Ukraine's list
Zelensky said air defence was a priority in the discussion and that Ukraine needs interceptors for Patriot systems to shield civilians from Russian strikes. He thanked Washington for its backing of Ukrainian independence and for its diplomatic efforts, la Repubblica reported.
The same day, Zelensky said a substantive meeting took place in Brussels involving Ukrainian representatives alongside teams from the United States, the European Union, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, NATO and the World Bank, focused on postwar recovery. That gathering was not connected in his account to the trilateral plan, but it broadens the circle of governments already working on what comes after the fighting.
Separately, ANSA reported that Melania Trump is convening Russian and Ukrainian officials at the White House on 5 November. The report did not specify the level of the officials involved or the agenda.
Fighting continues on both sides
Diplomacy proceeded alongside continued strikes. Russia's defence ministry said on Telegram that its forces hit a Nova Poshta logistics centre in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, a power plant in Dnipropetrovsk and a cargo vessel at sea about 52 kilometres southwest of the port of Odesa in the Black Sea. The ministry asserted that all the facilities were used for military purposes, a claim la Repubblica reported without independent verification.
In Russia's Ryazan region, governor Pavel Malkov said on Telegram that falling drone debris started fires at industrial facilities in the city and that power was disrupted in some districts. One person was injured in the attack on the region, he said, without giving details about the sites affected. The region is home to a large oil refinery, among other plants.
In Ukraine, a Russian drone attack injured three people after striking a private house and several garages in Dnipro, according to the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. Writing on Telegram, he said an infrastructure facility also caught fire, la Repubblica reported.
What to watch
Whether the trilateral format actually convenes, and who sits at the table, will be the first real measure of whether this week's phone diplomacy produces anything durable. Watch for confirmation of the venue and delegation level, and for any movement on Patriot interceptor supplies, which Zelensky has placed at the centre of Ukraine's asks.
