The next round of talks to end Russia’s four-year invasion of Ukraine are expected to be held in early March in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday after his officials concluded a meeting with U.S. envoys in Geneva.
Previous rounds of U.S.-led negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Geneva and Abu Dhabi have failed to yield a compromise, including on the key sticking point of territory.
“As a result of today’s meetings, there is already more readiness for the next trilateral format,” said Zelenskyy, adding that the meeting would “most likely” take place in Abu Dhabi in early March.
“We need to finalize everything that has been achieved in terms of real security guarantees and prepare for a meeting at the leadership level,” he said in a regular evening address.
“This format can solve a lot,” Zelenskyy added, referring to a potential meeting with his arch-foe, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv has long said that the only way to break the deadlock is a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders, who last faced each other in 2019.
Top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov, who sat with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the luxurious Hotel des Bergues for about six hours, said participants in Thursday’s talks spoke to Zelenskyy and were working to make the next three-sided meeting on a settlement “as substantive as possible.”
Umerov said that the talks had paid special attention to Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. “We worked out a document on the restoration of Ukraine in detail” with the Americans, he noted.
The sides “agreed positions that will form the basis for further agreements”, he added.
Russian economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev was present at the heavily guarded talks venue in Geneva on Thursday, though there was no indication he met with the Ukrainian side, according to Russian state media.
Philipp Hildebrand, vice chair of U.S. investment fund BlackRock, was also seen at the premises of the Hotel des Bergues, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer.
Russia, which has signaled it will not budge on its demands for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, said Thursday it was too early to forecast when a deal would take place.
“Have you heard anything from us about deadlines? We have no deadlines, we have tasks. We are getting them done,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state media.
Drone, missile attacks
Hours before the meeting, Russian forces launched some 420 drones and 39 missiles at Ukraine, wounding more than two dozen people in at least six different regions, according to authorities.
The strikes hit an electricity substation in the southern Odesa region, as well as a school building in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to officials.
“Destruction has been recorded in eight regions, with many private homes and apartment buildings damaged,” Zelenskyy said.
Also ahead of the meeting, Russia announced that it had returned the bodies of 1,000 killed Ukrainian soldiers to Ukraine, while Moscow received 35 Russian bodies in exchange.
The two sides regularly exchange the remains of killed servicemen, one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring countries.
Zelensky spoke with Trump on Wednesday ahead of the talks, with Witkoff and Kushner part of the 30-minute call.
Talks between Moscow and Kyiv remain deadlocked over the fate of the Donbas – the industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has been the epicenter of the fighting.
Russia is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and has threatened to take it by force if Kyiv does not cave at the negotiating table.
But Ukraine has rejected the demand and signaled it would not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again.
