Eastern Europe expert on Ukraine talks: “No high hopes”

Interview with Eastern Europe expert about Ukraine talks “No high hopes” As of: October 21, 2026 • 8:54 p.m

Russia has shown itself ready to resume talks with the USA and Ukraine. But is progress likely? Eastern Europe expert Umland appears skeptical in the tagesschau24 interview.

tagesschau24: There is a report that the Kremlin is ready to negotiate again from mid-November - with the USA and Ukraine. What to make of this?

Andreas Umland: Not much at the moment, because this negotiation theater has been going on for many years, basically since 2014. And it's always about what Russia can get in exchange for a ceasefire and peace. So how much Ukrainian territory will be given away, how much Ukrainian sovereignty will be given away. So far I don't have high hopes for it.

What I could imagine, however, is that perhaps the internal pressure in Russia will increase as a result of the Ukrainian long-range attacks, and that perhaps there will actually be a faction in Moscow that will orient itself towards a ceasefire. Perhaps that will change if the economic problems that Russia is currently experiencing worsen.

Then such negotiations make sense. But at the moment we can only expect further negotiation theater.

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tagesschau24: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj also said on Fox News that they were ready to freeze the front line. Is this something that could lure the Kremlin?

Umland: I'm afraid not. Ukraine's position has been in place for about a year and a half. Zelensky explicitly suggested this in the spring of 2025 and several times since then. He has also proposed partial ceasefires, such as a halt to long-range attacks on energy infrastructure or some kind of ceasefire in the Black Sea.

Russia has rejected all of these proposals because Russia wants territory in return for a ceasefire. That's how it always is. The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said almost 200 years ago: The conqueror doesn't want war, the conqueror just wants to peacefully invade the neighboring country and take over the territories. The conqueror always wants peace. And that's how it is with Putin now.

About Andreas Umland is an Eastern Europe expert at the European Policy Institute in Kyiv. He is also an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and teaches political science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. "Conference of the Great Powers - that is the great fear" tagesschau24: Is Ukraine currently in danger of being crushed between the USA and Russia - especially since the wind from the USA is blowing in favor of Russia again?

Umland: Yes, the fear is that we are heading towards a second Yalta, i.e. a conference of the great powers by which Eastern Europe will be divided up, and where the Eastern European nations no longer have anything to contribute.

That is the great fear. And I think it is also Putin's goal to return to the Yalta system: that the major powers alone discuss what to do with the smaller states.

tagesschau24: What should we expect from this relationship between the USA and Russia? Today there was news that American teacher Stephen Hubbard, imprisoned in Russia, has been released. At the same time it was said from Russia that the first diesel had been shipped to the USA. Is this a rapprochement in which Ukraine and perhaps Europe are completely left behind?

Surrounding area: Ultimately it's not that significant. This is primarily about the American election campaign. Putin is now trying to support Trump with such positive signals. The real scandal for Hubbard, who was 72 years old at the time of his imprisonment in eastern Ukraine, is that he spent so long in a Russian prison.

Russia wants to break the sanctions regime when it comes to diesel deliveries. But the agreed delivery quantities are so small that they will actually have no effect on the price of diesel in the USA. You are creating positive signals, but I don't think anything will change materially. This is essentially a form of Russian support for the Republican election campaign.

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tagesschau24: What else can we Europeans do? Many governments in Europe are under pressure, and in some countries elections are coming soon. The federal government is also under enormous pressure. How strong is Europe still that we can even have a say?

Surrounding area: The total number of European states is powerful. And there are not only European states that support Ukraine, but also Japan, Australia and Canada, for example. The coalition is large even without the USA.

The question is to what extent European countries develop a self-interest in at least a partial Ukrainian victory - that is, in ensuring that Ukraine does not lose further territory - and in enforcing a ceasefire along today's front line.

The self-interest could, for example, be to prevent further refugees from Ukraine, possibly millions of refugees. Or that they want to prevent that if Russia comes out of this war with a kind of partial victory, with a partial surrender of Ukraine, that Russia then sends its army to other European states, such as the Baltic states, which are members of NATO and the European Union. Then, according to the NATO treaty and the EU treaty, we would be obliged to take part in a war against Russia.

If we have an interest in preventing the refugees and the war from expanding into a war against NATO and the EU, then there should actually be enough self-interest of the European states to at least support Ukraine in maintaining the current front line.

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tagesschau24: The US midterm elections are in two weeks, and everything points to a defeat for the Republicans. At least one of the chambers in Congress will probably go to the Democrats. What changes for Europe, what for Ukraine and what for the constellation we just talked about?

Umland: That's difficult for me to assess because then of course a lot of things in domestic politics would change. But the Democrats tend to be more pro-Ukrainian than the Republicans and of course much more pro-Ukrainian than the current US administration.

The White House now represents a pro-Russian position in many respects; in UN votes, for example, Russia and the USA have recently often voted together. And it is precisely this White House that has completely stopped material support for Ukraine under Trump.

In this respect, I hope that with a change of power, at least in the House of Representatives and perhaps also in the Senate, the US's overall policy towards Ukraine will improve. However, there are also likely to be many domestic political implications that may reduce Americans' attention to world affairs. And that would then be negative for Ukraine.

The interview was conducted by Bernd Rasem, tagesschau24. The interview was adapted for the written version.

This topic in the program: tagesschau24 | News | Oct 21, 2026 | 4:00 p.m