By Olena Harmash
KYIV, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Ukrainian and Russian negotiators began a second round of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, seeking to advance efforts to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two.
The two-day trilateral meetings come after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had exploited a U.S.-backed energy truce last week to stockpile munitions, attacking Ukraine with a record number of ballistic missiles on Tuesday.
“Another round of negotiations has begun in Abu Dhabi. The negotiation process started in a trilateral format — Ukraine, the United States, and Russia,” Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s top negotiator, said on the Telegram app.
Umerov said that teams would also meet in separate groups to discuss specific negotiation tracks and would then follow up with a joint meeting to synchronise positions.
MAJOR DIFFERENCES REMAIN ON KEY POINTS
Over the past year, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the four-year conflict, triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks with U.S. officials.
The most sensitive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv 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.
Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops out of all of the eastern 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.
Russia currently occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.
Military analysts have said that Russian forces have gained about 1.5% of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024.
Polls show that the majority of Ukrainians oppose a deal that hands Moscow land. Kyiv residents told Reuters on Wednesday they were sceptical the new round of talks would bring any major breakthroughs.
“Let’s hope that it will change (something), of course. But I don’t believe it will change anything now. We will not give in, and they will not give in either,” Serhii, 38, a taxi driver, told Reuters.
The first round of talks was held in the UAE last month, marking the first direct public negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash; Additional reporting by Anna Voitenko and Anna Pruchnicka, Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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