Ukraine, Russia wrap ‘productive’ first day of talks
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Ukrainian and Russian officials have wrapped up a “productive” first day of new US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi that seek to advance efforts to end the almost four-year war.
The two-day trilateral meetings come after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had exploited an energy truce last week to stockpile munitions, attacking Ukraine with a record number of ballistic missiles on Tuesday.
“The work was substantive and productive, focused on concrete steps and practical solutions,” Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, wrote on X.
Shortly after the talks began, Russian forces struck a crowded market in eastern Ukraine with cluster munitions, killing at least seven people and wounding 15, the Donetsk region’s governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Umerov said he would prepare a report for Zelenskiy, and talks were expected to continue on Thursday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Photographs released earlier in the day by the United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry showed the three delegations sitting around a U-shaped table, with US officials seated at the centre, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Umerov said earlier the talks started with all three delegations present, after which negotiators were to break into groups according to topics and then meet as a full group again at the end.
Trump’s administration has pushed both Ukraine and Russia to find a compromise to end the four-year-old war but the two sides appear far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks with US officials.
The most sensitive issues are Russian demands that Ukraine give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which sits in a Russian-occupied area.
Russia wants Ukraine to pull its troops out of all of the Donetsk region, including a belt of heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences, as a precondition for any deal.
Ukraine said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected any unilateral pullback of its forces.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russian troops would keep fighting until Ukraine made “decisions” that could bring the war to an end.
Russia occupies about 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.
“Russia is not winning its war against Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told online media outlet Liga on Tuesday.
He argued that Russia was paying a heavy price in terms of battlefield casualties and economic harm for small territorial advances.
Military analysts have said Russian forces have gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday its forces had taken control of the settlements of Staroukrainka and Stepanivka in eastern Ukraine, the TASS news agency reported.
The first round of talks was held in the UAE last month, marking the first direct public negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
with AP
Reuters
