Abu Dhabi Talks: How Geopolitical Power Imbalances and Historical Trauma Shape Ukraine Peace Prospects
Original framing: “Zelenskiy says Ukrainian, Russian and US negotiators to meet in early November in Abu Dhabi - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The voices of Ukrainian internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Poland, who face xenophobia and housing shortages, or Russian conscripts from Chechnya and Dagestan, who are disproportionately sent to the frontlines, are entirely absent from the narrative. Women’s organizations like *La Strada Ukraine* have documented how gender-based violence has surged since 2022, yet their calls for gender-sensitive peace agreements are ignored. Similarly, Russian opposition figures (e.g., Ilya Yashin) warn that Putin’s regime will collapse only when the military-industrial complex loses its grip—a dynamic the talks do not address.
The Abu Dhabi talks are not a neutral diplomatic breakthrough but a high-stakes performance where power asymmetries—rooted in NATO expansion, Russian imperial nostalgia, and the Gulf’s geopolitical calculus—dictate the script.
Historical patterns from Helsinki to Minsk show that negotiations succeed only when all parties’ core security concerns are addressed, yet the current framing treats sovereignty as a Western legal demand rather than a negotiated reality. Indigenous and post-colonial frameworks (e.g., Māori *tino rangatiratanga*, Haudenosaunee *Great Law of Peace*) offer models for consensus-building that prioritize communal healing over punitive justice, yet these are absent from the talks. The *trickster* reveals the absurdity of negotiating peace while the war machine profits, with the UAE playing Hermes to both sides—a role that obscures its own economic interests. To break the cycle, solutions must integrate truth commissions, demilitarized aid, economic interdependence, and youth-led dialogues, all underpinned by cross-cultural models that treat sovereignty as a living, negotiated right rather than a fixed legal boundary.