Ukrainian and Russian negotiators have begun a second round of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi, seeking to advance efforts to end the almost four-year war.
The two-day trilateral meetings come after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had exploited an energy truce last week to stockpile munitions, attacking Ukraine with a record number of ballistic missiles on Tuesday.
"Another round of negotiations has begun in Abu Dhabi. The negotiation process started in a trilateral format - Ukraine, the United States and Russia," Rustem Umerov, Ukraine's top negotiator, said on social media.
Umerov said the talks started with all three delegations present, after which negotiators were to break into groups according to topics and then meet as a full group again at the end.
The US team was due to include special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who also attended last month’s meeting, according to the White House.
Over the past year, Trump's administration has pushed both Ukraine and Russia to find a compromise to end the four-year conflict, triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks with US officials.
The most sensitive issues are Russian demands that Ukraine give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which sits in a Russian-occupied area.
Russia wants Ukraine to pull its troops out of all of the eastern Donetsk region, including a belt of heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine's strongest defences, as a precondition for any deal.
Ukraine said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected any unilateral pullback of its forces.
Russia occupies about 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.
Military analysts have said that Russian forces have gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024.
Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday its forces had taken control of the settlements of Staroukrainka and Stepanivka in eastern Ukraine, the TASS news agency reported.
The first round of talks was held in the UAE last month, marking the first direct public negotiations between Russai and Ukraine.
with AP
