US Officials Call Three-Way Ukraine-Russia Talks Constructive

US officials said Saturday that discussions were constructive, even though no peace deal was finalized during the first trilateral meeting between the US, Ukraine and Russia since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago.

The parties all agreed to meet again next Sunday to continue negotiations, added the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The first round of talks took place over two days, Friday and Saturday, in Abu Dhabi, where the US delegation was led by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law. Both envoys met separately with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent days.

US officials said discussions over security protocols — a top priority for Ukrainians who have voiced concern over Putin potentially launching another invasion — are very advanced and that a framework has been reviewed by NATO and other European countries.

Zelenskiy, who also called the trilateral talks “constructive,” has said the thorniest issues are control over territory in eastern Ukraine and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russian forces seized in the first days of the four-year war. US officials said Saturday that there has not been a final framework agreed to on the fate of the plant, but said the sharing of the power produced by the plant will be a critical part of any agreement reached. The officials did not provide details on the negotiations over territories. 

After Friday’s talks in Abu Dhabi on Friday, Russia launched more than 370 drones and 21 missiles at Ukraine overnight, hitting Kyiv and the surrounding region, and other parts of the country.

In Kyiv alone, the attack left about 800,000 customers without electricity, while half of the high-rise apartment buildings in the city of more than 3 million people have no heat, Ukrainian authorities said. Temperatures are set to plunge to -12C overnight.

Trump said earlier this week that he had a “good” meeting with Zelenskiy in Davos, where he attended the annual meeting of the Word Economic Forum, and expressed renewed hope that the war Russia started four years ago was going to end.

The latest flurry of diplomatic efforts to try to end the war in Ukraine has in recent days been overshadowed by Trump’s effort to acquire Greenland. Trump continues to maintain the US needs to acquire Greenland for national security reasons, and said a “framework of a future deal” was reached after discussions in Davos regarding the island.

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