Reuters: Ukraine’s foreign minister says “only Trump can stop the war” as peace talks gain momentum

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha declared that the US-brokered peace talks have "momentum" and urged all sides to accelerate negotiations before the window closes, according to Reuters.

"Only Trump can stop the war," Sybiha told Reuters in his Kyiv office on 7 February, framing the American president as the sole figure capable of pressuring Moscow into a deal. From the original 20-point peace plan, only "a few" items remain unresolved, he said—but they are the most sensitive and most difficult, requiring direct talks between Zelenskyy and Putin.

Sybiha made clear that territorial concessions are not on the table: any recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea or the Donbas would be "legally void," he said. "We will never recognize this. It's about principle."

Beyond rejecting territorial concessions, Sybiha outlined a layered security architecture: a US-led ceasefire monitoring mechanism using drones, sensors, and satellites; troops from a "coalition of the willing" beyond Britain and France (he declined to name the others); and an Article 5-style trigger classifying any attack on Ukraine as an attack on all guarantors.

Despite his optimism, the foreign minister's confidence comes at a strained moment: Washington's recent radical turn in foreign policy has left European and non-European allies increasingly convinced they cannot rely on American security commitments.

Sybiha bets on America while Europe hedges

Foreign Minister Sybiha's insistence that no peace architecture can work "without the Americans" sits uneasily alongside Washington's own signals. The Trump administration has repeatedly told European partners to take the lead on Ukraine's security guarantees. Hans Petter Midttun, an expert on Russian hybrid warfare, has warned that the proposed Article 5-style mechanism is designed to fail, with escape clauses tailored to the guarantor rather than the guaranteed.

Sybiha told Reuters that Washington had confirmed its readiness to ratify security guarantees in Congress—a "huge, huge achievement." He added that countries beyond Britain and France had privately committed to deploying troops as a deterrence force, though he declined to name them.

"I personally do not believe, at this stage, in any security infrastructure or architecture without the Americans. We must have them with us—and they are in the process."—Andrii Sybiha to Reuters

But European officials have spent the past year preparing for a world in which American promises prove hollow. "This is the first time in the last 70 years that the Europeans no longer perceive American security guarantees as guarantees," Iulia Joja, director of the Black Sea program at the Middle East Institute, said in November 2025.

Sybiha wants to move fast before the US midterm campaigning drains Washington's attention. But whether the White House that told Europe to "own this conflict" will follow through on Congressional ratification remains an open question.

Why momentum may not be enough: Russia's track record of breaking agreements

Moscow's negotiating history offers little reassurance. Leaked Kremlin emails revealed that Russia designed the Minsk process—the two ceasefire agreements brokered by France and Germany after Russia's 2014 invasion—not as a path to peace but as a mechanism to force Ukraine's capitulation, then violated both agreements while spending years preparing the full-scale 2022 invasion. Analysts have identified the same Soviet-era "Gromyko method" at work in Abu Dhabi: weaponizing diplomacy to buy time.

Two rounds of trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi have produced procedural progress but no breakthrough on core issues. The Abu Dhabi talks remain focused on "the plumbing beneath peace"—prisoner exchanges, military communications, ceasefire monitoring—while the political questions that will decide whether the war actually ends don't yet have a table.

Russia still demands that Ukraine surrender the roughly 20% of Donetsk Oblast that Kyiv still controls. Conceding would validate Moscow's claim to sovereignty over Crimea, annexed in 2014, and the four Ukrainian Oblasts it "annexed" through sham referendums in 2022 held at gunpoint— the very recognition Sybiha called "legally void."

Ukraine wants the return of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—Europe's largest—that Russia illegally seized. Neither side has moved. That impasse is not incidental. As EP's analysis of Russia's use of the Gromyko method shows, maximalist demands are the point — procedural progress gives Moscow the appearance of engagement while the war grinds on.

"I especially want a very simple answer: yes, if there is another act of aggression, all partners will give a strong response to the Russians. So far, I have not received a clear, direct answer."—President Zelenskyy on security guarantees, January 2026

Russia has not slowed its assaults during the latest round of negotiations. On 3 February—one day before delegates sat down in Abu Dhabi—Russia launched its largest energy attack of 2026: 71 missiles and around 450 drones struck thermal power plants across Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa in temperatures below -20°C, leaving thousands without electricity or heat.

The most tangible result so far has been a prisoner exchange: 157 Ukrainian POWs returned home as part of a 314-prisoner swap, the first exchange since October. President Zelenskyy said the US had proposed a third round of talks in Miami within a week, which Kyiv accepted. Whether Sybiha's declared momentum survives contact with Moscow's stalling tactics will become clear soon enough.