Ukraine, Russia to hold second day of direct talks on US plan

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates: Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the United States will meet in Abu Dhabi on Saturday for the second day of negotiations on a plan being pushed by US President Donald Trump to end the almost four-year-long war.

The first known direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the proposal began Friday. Ukraine’s chief negotiator Rustem Umerov said the discussions focused “on the parameters for ending Russia’s war and the further logic of the negotiation process”.

An initial US draft drew heavy criticism in Kyiv and western Europe for hewing too closely to Moscow’s line, while later iterations prompted pushback from Russia for floating the idea of European peacekeepers.

Both sides say the fate of territory in the eastern Donbas region is one of the main outstanding issues in the search for a settlement to a war that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and decimated parts of Ukraine.

The UAE foreign ministry said in a statement the talks were scheduled to last two days and were “part of ongoing efforts to promote dialogue and identify political solutions to the crisis”.

Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday and US envoy Steve Witkoff later held talks with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

Donbas dispute

The Emirates meeting began as thousands of people in Kyiv were without heating in sub-zero temperatures due to Russian strikes.

The European Union, which has sent hundreds of generators, accused Moscow of “deliberately depriving civilians of heat”.

Further Russian strikes killed one person and injured 22 others in Ukraine’s capital and the northeastern city of Kharkiv overnight, authorities said early Saturday.

“Kyiv is under a massive enemy attack,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko posted on Telegram, adding that several non-residential buildings had been hit and telling residents to remain in shelters.

While diplomacy to end Europe’s worst conflict since World War II has gained pace, Moscow and Kyiv appear deadlocked over the issue of territory.

Hours after Putin met Witkoff — and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — in Moscow, the Kremlin said its maximalist demand that Kyiv withdraw from the eastern Donbas region still stood.

“Russia’s position is well known on the fact that Ukraine, Ukrainian armed forces, have to leave the territory of the Donbas,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“This is a very important condition,” he added.

Kyiv, which still controls around 20 percent of the eastern region, has rejected such terms.

Ahead of the talks Zelensky told reporters territory remained a “key issue” — with Moscow having said it is not dropping its demand that Kyiv pull out of its eastern Donbas region.

In a post online, he later added: “It is necessary that not only Ukraine has the desire to end the war and achieve full security, but that a similar desire somehow emerges in Russia as well.”

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are last known to have met face-to-face in Istanbul last summer, in talks that ended only in deals to exchange captured soldiers.

The Abu Dhabi meeting is the first time they have faced each other to talk about the Trump administration’s plan.

Putin has repeatedly said Moscow intends to get full control of eastern Ukraine by force if talks fail.