Ukraine, Russia wrap ‘productive’ first day of US-backed peace talks

KYIV - Ukrainian and Russian officials wrapped up a “productive” first day of new US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi, Kyiv’s lead negotiator said on Feb 4, as fighting in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II raged on.

The two-day trilateral meetings come after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had exploited a US-backed energy truce last week to stockpile munitions, attacking Ukraine with

a record number of ballistic missiles

on Feb 3.

“The work was substantive and productive, focused on concrete steps and practical solutions,” Mr Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, wrote on X.

Shortly after the talks began, Russian forces struck a crowded market in eastern Ukraine with cluster munitions, killing at least seven people and wounding 15, the Donetsk region’s governor, Mr Vadym Filashkin, said.

Mr Umerov said he would prepare a report for Mr Zelensky, and talks were expected to continue on Feb 5, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Photographs released earlier in the day by the United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry showed the three delegations sitting around a U-shaped table, with US officials seated at the centre, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Mr Jared Kushner.

Major differences remain on key points

Mr Trump’s administration has pushed both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the four-year-old war, but the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks with US officials.

The most sensitive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv 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.

Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops out of all of the 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.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Feb 4 that Russian troops would keep fighting until Kyiv made “decisions” that could bring the war to an end.

Russia currently occupies about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.

“Russia is not winning its war against Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told online media outlet Liga on Feb 3.

He argued that Moscow was paying a heavy price in terms of battlefield casualties and economic harm for small territorial advances.

Ukrainians oppose painful concessions

Polls show that the majority of Ukrainians oppose a deal that hands Moscow more land. Kyiv residents told Reuters on Feb 4 they were sceptical that the new round of talks would bring any major breakthroughs.

“Let’s hope that it will change (something), of course. But I don’t believe it will change anything now,” Serhii, 38, a taxi driver, told Reuters.

“We will not give in, and they will not give in either.”

The first round of talks was held in the UAE in January, marking the first direct public negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed their ties during a video call on Feb 4 held in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said Mr Xi - who it said supported this week’s talks - had invited the Russian leader to China in the coming months. Beijing has sought to cast itself as a peacemaker in the war and is a close ally of Moscow, which is increasingly struggling to fund its vast war economy.

A source close to the government told Reuters that Russia’s public deficit could balloon to almost triple the official target by end-2026. REUTERS