After reports of progress, Kremlin says Ukraine talks will continue
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
By NATALIYA VASILYEVA
Talks among Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. officials to end the war in Ukraine are set to resume next week, the Kremlin spokesperson said Monday, after a round of negotiations that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine described as constructive.
Two days of talks, the first face-to-face negotiations by Ukraine and Russia since June, wrapped up Saturday in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. Zelenskyy said on social media Saturday that more meetings would be held “provided there is readiness to move forward.”
On Monday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters in Moscow that further talks were scheduled for next week, though he did not specify a date. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe diplomatic strategy, said the talks were set for Sunday.
Both Ukrainian and Russian officials left the rare direct talks in Abu Dhabi in a somewhat optimistic mood, according to official Ukrainian statements and Russian state media reports. After months of negotiations, Ukraine and the United States have come to an agreement on much of a 20-point peace plan, but it remains unclear if Russia will ultimately agree to any proposal to end the war.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy said the delegations had discussed an American role in postwar security guarantees for Ukraine and that negotiations on the issue would continue.
On Sunday, he said that Ukraine and Russia both should be willing to compromise. But Peskov, in his remarks Monday, gave little indication that the Kremlin was ready to back down on its full aims in Ukraine.
A major sticking point is control of territory in eastern Ukraine. On that question, Peskov insisted that Moscow would accept nothing less than terms that Russia says were reached by President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin this past summer in Alaska. Russia says the U.S. president agreed to a deal in which Ukraine would surrender parts of the Donbas region that Russian forces have been unable to capture through four years of war.
Steve Witkoff, a U.S. envoy who participated in the Abu Dhabi talks, said before those meetings that just one major issue was left to be resolved. Zelenskyy said the issue was territory. “It’s all about the eastern part of our country,” he said last week in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum. “It’s all about the land.”
In its daily brief on the war in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said the Kremlin may be using the new trilateral talks simply to stall for time, as Moscow has done repeatedly through years of on-again-off-again negotiations.
The institute, a policy organization based in Washington, noted that Russia hoped to avoid the additional sanctions that Trump had threatened if the Kremlin refused to negotiate.
The peace process has taken on a greater urgency for Ukraine: Moscow has intensified a bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, leaving hundreds of thousands without power or heating during a brutal Ukrainian winter.
As of Sunday evening, more than 1,300 apartment buildings in Kyiv had no power or heat, according to Vitali Klitschko, the city’s mayor.