A new round of U.S.-brokered talks on ending Russia’s war on Ukraine will take place this week in Abu Dhabi after a brief postponement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. Peskov confirmed that the trilateral talks are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday at the same location where a previous meeting was held last month, as fighting continued along the front lines and long-range attacks hit rear areas.
Peskov said the postponement earlier this weekend was due to scheduling conflicts, and he described the upcoming negotiations as “very complex.” In remarks to reporters, he said that on some issues the sides had “certainly” moved closer because there had been “discussions, conversations,” but that “there are issues where it’s more difficult to find common ground.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Ukraine would send a delegation to the Abu Dhabi talks. The meeting initially was set for the weekend but was delayed, Peskov said, because of scheduling conflicts, with Zelenskyy signaling Ukraine’s participation after the rescheduling.
The talks come as the Trump administration has continued over the past year to press for compromises between Moscow and Kyiv. But Peskov’s remarks underscored that the most difficult issues have not yielded a breakthrough, with the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion approaching later this month.
One of the key sticking points is the question of whether Russia will be allowed to keep the Ukrainian territory its army has occupied. The Kremlin also has demanded possession of other Ukrainian land in the east that it has not been able to capture, according to the report.
The negotiations are taking place amid continued strikes that have affected civilians and infrastructure. The report said Russian drones and missiles bombarded civilian areas, killing 12 miners in a bus attack on Sunday, and that the barrages also damaged the Ukrainian power grid, leaving people without heating, light, and running water in winter cold.
On the technology side, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Monday that Ukraine is taking steps to prevent Russia using Starlink satellite services to guide drones to targets. Fedorov said he asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX for help to deny Russia use of the service in Ukraine and added that Ukraine requires civilian and military Starlink users to register their terminals on a database to keep approved devices operating while unregistered ones would be disabled inside Ukraine.
Fedorov said the steps were already bearing fruit, pointing to Musk’s public comment on X on Sunday. Musk said Ukraine’s “steps we took” to stop unauthorized Starlink use by Russia had “worked,” and he told officials to let him know if more needs to be done.
Litvinova contributed from Tallinn, Estonia.