Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in Abu Dhabi yesterday to address the key issue of territory, with no sign of compromise, as Russian attacks plunged Ukraine into its deepest energy crisis of the four-year war.
Kiev is under increasing pressure from the US to reach a peace deal in the war that began with a Russian invasion in February 2022, with Moscow demanding that Kiev cede the entire eastern industrial region of Donbass before it will cease fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the territorial dispute and, above all, the Donbas issue would be the top priority of talks in the United Arab Emirates. Negotiations in the Gulf are expected to continue today, Zelensky's aide said.
The talks come amid intensified Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy system, which have cut off electricity and heating supplies in major cities like Kiev, while temperatures are well below freezing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's demand that Ukraine hand over the 20% of Donetsk Oblast in Donbass that it still holds - about 5.000 square kilometers - has proven to be a major obstacle to reaching an agreement.
Zelensky refuses to give up territory that Russia failed to conquer during four years of a grueling, protracted war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said yesterday that Russia's insistence that Ukraine cede Donbass was a "very important condition."
A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Moscow interprets the so-called "Anchorage formula", which Moscow said was agreed between Donald Trump and Putin at a summit last August, as Russia controlling all of Donbas and freezing the current front lines elsewhere in eastern and southern Ukraine.
As the negotiations were underway, the head of Ukraine's largest private power producer, Maksim Timchenko, told Reuters yesterday that Ukraine needed a ceasefire to stop attacks on energy supplies, saying the situation was approaching a "humanitarian catastrophe."
The trilateral format of the US-brokered meeting in Abu Dhabi is unprecedented. Direct talks between Russia and Ukraine took place during the first year of the war, in 2022, and three times in 2025 in Istanbul. Those talks resulted only in the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of dead soldiers, without resolving the conflict. The Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi is led by General Igor Kostyukov, a senior official in the Russian General Staff and head of the GRU - the country's military intelligence service, which monitors thousands of spies abroad. According to Kiev, the Ukrainian delegation is led by Security Council Secretary Rustem Umerov and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General Andriy Khnatov.
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