Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: US President Donald Trump, who lost the US Congress midterm elections last week chiefly because of his ongoing, inconclusive war in Iran, has accelerated efforts to bring peace to another battlefront, Ukraine, which is fighting a war against Russia since February 2022.
On his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin has also accelerated efforts to bring peace to Iran, while still bombing ‘the hell out of Ukraine.’
Mercifully, Putin has claimed no Nobel Peace Prize unlike Trump who has tried to grab one by campaigning himself for the two years, claiming umpteen times that he ended multiple wars across the planet.
In his latest efforts, the media reported on Wednesday, the US President is attempting a new peace push in nine months to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Aiming to bring peace in Ukraine, delegates including US officials, led by US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, members of the Russian delegation, led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin aide, met with Ukrainian official in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the US-brokered meeting as very productive, without giving details. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also called the talks “constructive and quite substantive,” and said they had included humanitarian and security issues.
“Too early”
But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said it was too early to assess the meeting ahead of a second day of talks on Wednesday.
Despite public optimism from Trump, the warring sides remain far apart on terms for a possible settlement, more than 54 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
Today, Russian forces control about a fifth of Ukraine, but territory is not the only issue at stake. Others include future security guarantees, which both sides want, and Moscow’s demands that Ukraine adopt neutral status and not join NATO.
Trump has intensified pressure on Kyiv to reach a deal, saying it is time for Ukraine to end the war or face “a very bad thing.” Last week he said the war was close to being settled in a “big beautiful agreement,” but he has frequently predicted breakthroughs that have not materialised.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underlined Moscow’s preference for negotiating a broad European security framework before tackling the specifics of the war.
Zelenskyy told journalists he had deep reservations about the proposals for a new security architecture.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday wider security talks should only follow a ceasefire. Lavrov rejected the notion of a truce, saying the Europeans were trying to secure breathing space for Ukraine.
The new American drive for a deal has galvanized European officials into pushing for a place at the negotiating table to seek an end to Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War. Before the main meeting, the Ukrainians met separately with European, NATO and European Union representatives and the two American envoys.
France said lasting peace was not possible without addressing European security, and Europeans must be involved.
European governments have mostly shunned contact with Putin during the war, although Finnish and Norwegian leaders held a call with him on October 27 that was criticised by some of their European peers.
Russia had made clear it did not see a place for Europeans at the meeting with the Ukrainians and Americans.
Rubio, speaking in Paris, said the US aimed to expand the trilateral talks to include Europe at some point.
Russia’s mounting 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 Russia’s state statistics agency identified 393,881 deaths linked to military operations or their consequences between 2022 and August 2026.
Separately, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimated that 400,000 to 450,000 Russian military personnel were killed between February 2022 and June 2026, more than nine times the combined Soviet and Russian military fatalities in wars since World War II.
The Moscow Times, citing a broader analysis of the leaked records, reported that roughly 450,000 war-related deaths would make the conflict Russia’s fourth most common cause of death since 2022.
Putin’s offer on Iran
On his part, Putin has also offered Trump to mediate in the Iran war the US President stated on February 28, 2026.
Putin told the visiting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that Russia will “do everything” to help end the United States-led war on Iran, Russian news agencies reported.
The two leaders met in Turkmenistan on Thursday ahead of the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet nations.
“We are ready to do everything we can to help you resolve this situation,” Interfax news agency said Putin told Pezeshkian.
“We know that Iran is making real efforts to end the conflict, which broke out through no fault of its own, no fault of Iran’s,” Putin said.
He also noted what he called a “positive evolution” in Iran-Russia relations.
In a call on Wednesday, Putin told Pezeshkian that Moscow is prepared to mediate efforts to end the war in the Middle East, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.
The two leaders had also met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Kyrgyzstan last month.
Strategic partnership
The two countries, which both are under heavy Western sanctions, have reinforced diplomatic and military ties.
Last year, Moscow and Tehran signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty” that covers areas from trade and military cooperation to science, culture and education.
Ukraine and Western countries have accused Iran of supplying Russia with Shahed drones and short-range missiles for use in the Ukraine war. Russia has also been accused of supplying data to Iran for its attacks on US targets in the Middle East.