ABU DHABI (The Thursday Times) — Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a large exchange of prisoners of war, negotiators said on Wednesday as two days of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi ended without a breakthrough on ending the war, which is nearing its fifth year.
The session in the UAE capital was the first meeting between the two delegations since February, when they met in Geneva. Both Moscow and Kyiv confirmed that a prisoner swap was being prepared, though Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation, said it had been agreed “in principle”.
“One of the positives is we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners, which we’re going to finalise the numbers tomorrow,” said Jared Kushner, the US envoy and son-in-law of President Donald Trump. He called it “a very tough meeting but a productive one”.
Kushner said he and fellow envoy Steve Witkoff would fly to Moscow on Thursday to meet President Vladimir Putin, and then to Dublin to see Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Neither president attended the talks.
Territory is the hardest question
Kushner said territory was the most difficult issue on the table. The core dispute remains the eastern Donetsk region, most of which Russia occupies. Moscow wants Ukraine to give up the parts it still holds, while Kyiv wants to freeze the front line where it is. “The reality is there is no trust right now between the sides, and that is to be expected after a conflict like this,” Kushner said.
The two sides also disagree on sequence. Kyiv and European governments want a ceasefire before any talks on a future security framework, while the Kremlin insists the fighting stops only once a full agreement is reached. Kushner said progress had been made on post-war security arrangements, but that nothing could take effect until there was a deal on territory.
Davyd Arakhamia, of Ukraine’s negotiating team, called the round “one of the hardest” and said the Russian side had arrived with very strict instructions. He still saw “good momentum” towards a settlement before the end of the year, and said the next round should be multilateral, with Europe at the table.
Europe waits outside the room
Officials from Britain, NATO, and several European Union countries were in Abu Dhabi and met the American and Ukrainian negotiators, but the Russian delegation said it had no contact with them. Zelenskyy said it was impossible to think about European security “without Europe”.
Medinsky said more talks would follow soon and that Moscow did not object to the EU taking part, though he questioned what there was to discuss. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said European statements so far did not show “any desire on their part to contribute to movement along the path toward peace”. Kushner said getting the Europeans “added to the format” would be on his agenda in Moscow. TT’s analysis of what was at stake in the talks is here.
The fighting went on as the delegations met. Three people were killed and 11 injured in a Russian daytime attack on a market in the southern Odesa region, local officials said. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had downed 627 Ukrainian drones overnight, and a regional governor said drones started a fire at the Baltic oil port of Ust-Luga, injuring three workers.
The two countries have swapped prisoners regularly through the war. They freed 200 each in March after the Geneva talks, and exchanged 1,000 each in May last year, the largest swap so far.
