Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in Abu Dhabi to discuss territorial issues on Friday.
- Talks occurred amid intensified Russian airstrikes on infrastructure, causing Ukraine's worst energy crisis of the war.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued to insist on no territorial concessions despite Russian demands for all of the Donbas region.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in Abu Dhabi on Friday to tackle the vital issue of territory, with no sign of a compromise, as Russian airstrikes plunged Ukraine into its worst energy crisis of the four-year war.
Kyiv is under mounting U.S. pressure to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with Moscow demanding Kyiv cede its entire eastern industrial area of Donbas before it stops fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the territorial dispute would be a central issue at the talks in the United Arab Emirates, which were scheduled to conclude on Saturday.
"The most important thing is that Russia should be ready to end this war, which it started," Zelenskyy said in a statement on the Telegram app, adding he was in regular contact with the Ukrainian delegation but it was too early to draw conclusions from Friday's talks.
"We'll see how the conversation goes tomorrow and what the outcome will be."
The negotiations come a day after Zelenskyy held talks with President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which yielded no immediate results.
Russia steps up attacks on power infrastructure
The tripartite talks unfold against a backdrop of intensified Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy system that have cut power and heating to major cities like Kyiv, as temperatures hover well below freezing.
The head of Ukraine's top private power producer, Maxim Timchenko, told Reuters on Friday that the situation was nearing a "humanitarian catastrophe" and that Ukraine needs a ceasefire that halts attacks on energy.
Kyiv's energy minister said on Thursday that Ukraine's power grid had endured its most difficult day since a widespread blackout in November 2022, when Russia first began bombing energy infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's demand that Ukraine surrender the 20% it still holds of the Donetsk region of the Donbas, about 1,900 square miles, has proven a major stumbling block to a breakthrough deal.
Zelenskyy refuses to give up land that Russia has not been able to capture in four years of grinding, attritional warfare. Polls show little appetite among Ukrainians for territorial concessions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia's insistence on Ukraine yielding all of Donbas was "a very important condition."
A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Moscow considers a so-called "Anchorage formula," which Russia says was agreed between Trump and Putin at a summit in Alaska last August, would hand Russia control of all of Donbas and freeze the current front lines elsewhere in Ukraine's east and south.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow said in 2022 it was annexing after referendums rejected by Kyiv and Western nations as bogus. Most countries recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine.
Security guarantees agreed, Zelenskyy says
Zelenskyy said on Thursday in Davos that the Abu Dhabi talks would be the first trilateral meetings involving Ukrainian and Russian envoys and U.S. mediators since the war began.
Last year, Russian and Ukrainian delegations had their first face-to-face meeting since 2022 when they met in Istanbul. A top Ukrainian military intelligence officer also had talks with U.S. and Russian delegations in Abu Dhabi in November.
Ukraine has sought robust security guarantees from Western allies in the event of a peace deal to prevent Russia, which has shown little interest in ending the war, from invading again.
Zelenskyy said on Friday that a deal on U.S. security guarantees for Kyiv was ready, and that he was only waiting on Trump for a specific date and place to sign it.
For its part, Russia has floated the idea of using the bulk of nearly $5 billion of Russian assets frozen in the United States to fund a recovery of Russian-occupied territory inside Ukraine. Ukraine, backed by European allies, demands that Russia pay it reparations.
Asked about Russia's idea, Zelenskyy dismissed it as "nonsense."
Russia says it wants a diplomatic solution but will keep working to achieve its goals by military means as long as a negotiated solution remains elusive.
Contributing: Anastasia Lyrchikova and Gleb Bryanski
