The main sticking point in the negotiations continues to be the long-term fate of territory in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are set to join for a second round of United States-brokered talks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as they seek to advance fraught talks on how to end Russia’s nearly four-year war in Ukraine.
The two-day trilateral talks slated to be held in Abu Dhabi come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of violating the Trump-brokered deal that called for ceasing attacks on energy facilities.
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A huge Russian drone and missile barrage in the run-up to the talks, pounding Ukraine’s energy grid and knocking out power and heating in temperatures far below freezing, threatened to overshadow any chances of progress in the Emirati capital.
“Each such Russian strike confirms that attitudes in Moscow have not changed: They continue to bet on war and the destruction of Ukraine, and they do not take diplomacy seriously,” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.
“The work of our negotiating team will be adjusted accordingly,” he said, without elaborating.
The first round of the meeting was held in the UAE last month, marking the first direct public negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv on a plan proposed by US President Donald Trump’s administration to end the conflict – Europe’s worst since World War II.
While the Trump administration has, over the past year, pushed the two sides to find compromises, breaking the deadlock on key issues appears no closer as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of its neighbour approaches later this month.
What are the sticking points?
The main sticking point is the long-term fate of territory in eastern Ukraine, which Russia has occupied. Security guarantees for Ukraine against future Russian attacks have also been one of the obstacles in the talks to end the conflict.
Moscow is demanding that Kyiv pull its troops out of swaths of the Donbas, including heavily fortified cities atop vast natural resources, as a precondition of any deal. It also wants international recognition for the land it annexed in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected a unilateral pull-back of forces.
Ukraine’s delegation will be headed by Security Council chief Rustem Umerov, while Russia will be represented by its military intelligence director Igor Kostyukov, a career naval officer sanctioned in the West over his role in the Ukraine invasion.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev attended talks in Florida with US officials over the weekend. While neither side released details of what was discussed, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said they were “productive and constructive”.
Witkoff led the US team during last month’s talks.
Russia, which occupies about 20 percent of its neighbour, has threatened to take the rest of the Donetsk region if talks fail.
Ukraine has warned that ceding ground will embolden Moscow and that it will not sign a deal that fails to deter Russia from invading again.
Kyiv still controls about one-fifth of the mineral-rich Donetsk region.
Russia also claims the Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as its own, and holds pockets of territory in at least three other eastern Ukrainian regions.
The majority of the Ukrainian public is against a deal that hands Moscow land in exchange for peace, according to opinion polls.
On the battlefield, Russia has been notching up gains at immense human cost, hoping it can outlast and outgun Kyiv’s stretched army.
Zelenskyy has been pushing his Western backers to boost their own weapons supplies and heap economic and political pressure on the Kremlin to halt the invasion.
Following the first round of talks, Ukrainians were doubtful that any deal could be struck with Moscow.
“I think it’s all just a show for the public,” Petro, a Kyiv resident, told the AFP news agency. “We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
