Dialogues to continue as Ukraine peace talks end without deal after overnight Russian strikes

Dialogues are set to continue after Ukraine and Russia ended a second day of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi without a deal. Both sides agreed to meet again next weekend. The talks showed no sign of progress amid overnight Russian airstrikes that left more than a million Ukrainians without power in subzero conditions. Despite the stalemate, both delegations said they remained open to further negotiations.

“The central focus of the discussions was the possible parameters for ending the war,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy wrote on X after the meeting.

A US official, speaking to reporters immediately after the talks, said more discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi.

“We saw a lot of respect in the room between the parties because they were really looking to find solutions,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We got to real granular detail and (we feel) that next Sunday will be, God willing, another meeting where we push this deal towards its final culmination.”

A UAE government spokesperson said there was face-to-face engagement between Ukraine and Russia — rare in the almost four-year-old war triggered by a full-scale Russian invasion — and that negotiators addressed “outstanding elements” of Washington’s peace framework.

Looking beyond next week’s negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the US official expressed hope for further meetings, possibly in Moscow or Kyiv.

“Those sorts of meetings have to happen, in our view, before we get a bilateral between (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Zelenskiyy, or a trilateral with Putin, Zelenskiyy and President Trump. But I don’t think we’re so far away from that,” the official said.

Strikes hit Kyiv and Kharkiv before talks resumed

The bombardment of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and its second-largest city, Kharkiv, by hundreds of Russian drones and missiles led Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha—who was not present at the talks—to accuse Putin of acting “cynically”.

“This barbaric attack once again proves that Putin’s place is not at (US President Donald Trump’s) Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal,” Sybiha wrote on X.
“His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table.”

The UAE statement said the discussions took place in a “constructive and positive atmosphere” and included consideration of confidence-building measures.

Kyiv is under increasing pressure from the Trump administration to make concessions in order to reach an agreement to end Europe’s deadliest and most destructive conflict since World War Two.

US peace envoy Steve Witkoff said at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos this week that significant progress had been made in the talks and only one sticking point remained, while Russian officials have sounded more sceptical.

Security proposals and territorial demands in focus

After Saturday’s talks, Zelenskiyy said the US delegation had raised the issue of “potential formats for formalising the parameters for ending the war, as well as the security conditions required to achieve this”.

The US official said the proposed security protocols were widely viewed as “very, very strong.”

“The Ukrainians and many of the national security advisors of all the European countries have reviewed these security protocols. And to a person, and this includes NATO, including (NATO Secretary General) Mark Rutte, they have expressed the fact that they’ve never seen security protocols this robust,” the official said.

Ahead of the discussions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia had not dropped its demand that Ukraine yield all of its eastern area of Donbas, the industrial heartland comprising the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.