Russia and Ukraine Return to the Table

French broadcaster France 24 says the meeting was the first US-brokered contact since February.

Russian and Ukrainian officials met in US-brokered talks on November 10, the first such contact between the two sides since February, according to France 24.

That is the news, and it matters even before anyone claims progress. In a war that has consumed cities, soldiers and civilian routine alike, a meeting is not peace. But the absence of meetings has its own brutality: it leaves the field to missiles, attrition and speeches about what cannot be negotiated.

France 24 said the talks came after US President Donald Trump suggested that a broad deal was possible on ending the war in Ukraine and providing security guarantees in Europe. The phrasing is large enough to invite suspicion. “Broad deal” can mean an opening, or just the sort of diplomatic fog in which every side hears its preferred future. The available report does not set out what was on the table, who led the delegations, or whether the session produced any concrete agreement.

That limit matters. A meeting can be a procedural step, a test of positions, or a performance for allies and domestic audiences. It is still different from nothing. The war has gone on long enough for negotiation itself to become contested terrain, with every contact scrutinized for signs of concession, weakness or exhaustion.

The mention of European security guarantees is also a reminder that Ukraine is not only negotiating over lines on a map. Any settlement language would reach into questions of deterrence, military support and what kind of promises outside powers are actually willing to keep. Those are the clauses that sound abstract until people have to live beneath them.

For now, what is established is narrower than the political appetite around it: officials from Russia and Ukraine met in talks brokered by the United States, and it was the first such meeting since February. Whether that marks the start of a process or another brief interruption in the war’s logic was not clear from the report.