Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in Abu Dhabi this Friday (23) to discuss the crucial issue of the territory, with no signs of an agreement, while Russian air strikes plunged Ukraine into its worst energy crisis in almost four years of war.
Kiev is under increasing pressure from the US to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with Moscow demanding that Kiev cede all of its eastern Donbas industrial area before fighting ceases.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the territorial dispute was a central issue in the three-party talks, which included Russian, Ukrainian and American officials and were expected to conclude on Saturday.
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“The most important thing is that Russia is ready to put an end to this war, which it itself started,” Zelensky said in a statement on the Telegram app, adding that he was in regular contact with Ukrainian negotiators but that it was too early to draw conclusions from Friday’s talks.
“We’ll see how the conversation plays out tomorrow and what the outcome will be.”
Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and head of its delegation, said in a statement that the talks addressed the parameters for ending the war and the “future logic of the negotiation process.”
The talks come a day after Zelensky met with US President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Zelensky said on Friday that an agreement on US security guarantees for Ukraine was ready and that he was just waiting for a specific date and place from Trump to sign it.
Ukraine has sought robust security guarantees from its Western allies in the event of a peace deal to prevent Russia, which has shown little interest in ending the war, from invading the country again.
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Russia steps up attacks on energy infrastructure
The three-party talks, mediated by the US, are taking place against a backdrop of intensifying Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, which have disrupted power and heating supplies in major cities like Kiev as temperatures fall well below freezing.
The chairman of Ukraine’s largest private energy producer, Maxim Timchenko, told Reuters on Friday that the situation was approaching a “humanitarian catastrophe” and that Ukraine needed a ceasefire that would stop attacks on energy infrastructure.
Kiev’s energy minister said on Thursday that Ukraine’s power grid faced its toughest day since the widespread blackout of November 2022, when Russia began bombing energy infrastructure.
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Russia says it wants a diplomatic solution, but will continue to work to achieve its goals through military means as long as a negotiated solution remains elusive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that Ukraine cede the 20% it still holds in the Donbas region of Donetsk – around 5,000 km² (1,900 square miles) – has proven to be a major obstacle to a decisive agreement.
Zelensky refuses to cede territories that Russia has failed to conquer in four years of exhausting and attritional war. Polls show little interest among Ukrainians in territorial concessions.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia’s insistence that Ukraine cede all of Donbas was “a very important condition.”
A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Moscow considers that an “Anchorage formula” – which Russia says was agreed between Trump and Putin at a summit in Alaska last August – would give Russia control of all of Donbas and freeze the front lines in other parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow announced in 2022 it would annex after referendums rejected by Kiev and Western nations as fraudulent. Most countries recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine.
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Moscow wants to use frozen assets
Russia has also considered using most of the nearly $5 billion in Russian assets frozen in the United States to finance the recovery of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Ukraine, supported by European allies, demands that Russia pay it compensation.
Asked about the idea of Russia, Zelensky dismissed it as “absurdity”.
Zelensky said on Thursday in Davos that the Abu Dhabi talks would be the first trilateral meetings involving Ukrainian and Russian envoys and American mediators since the start of the war.
Last year, Russian and Ukrainian delegations held their first face-to-face meeting since 2022, in Istanbul. A senior Ukrainian military intelligence official also spoke to American and Russian delegations in Abu Dhabi in November.
