Russia and Ukraine sit for tense talks on thorny territorial issue
The Abu Dhabi negotiations are the first trilateral meetings involving Ukrainian and Russian envoys and US mediators since the war began
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 air strikes plunged Ukraine into its worst energy crisis of the nearly four-year war.
Kyiv is under mounting US 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 Zelensky said the territorial dispute was a central issue for 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,” Zelensky 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.”
Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council and the head of its delegation, said in a statement the talks had discussed parameters for ending the war and the “further logic of the negotiation process”.