Russia has announced that it will hold security talks with the United States and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on Friday, while warning that a lasting peace will not be possible unless territorial disputes are resolved.
The announcement came after a late-night meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior US envoys in Moscow. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the talks, which lasted about four hours and ended shortly before midnight, were “substantive, constructive and very frank.”
Ushakov said Russian Admiral Igor Kostyukov would lead Moscow’s delegation at the three-way security talks. He added that Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s investment envoy, would hold separate discussions on economic issues with Steve Witkoff, an envoy of US President Donald Trump.
Despite outlining next steps, Ushakov said no major breakthrough had been achieved.
“Without resolving the territorial issue under the formula agreed in Anchorage, there is no hope for a long-term settlement,” Ushakov said, referring to last year’s Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.
He said Putin stressed that Russia remains interested in a diplomatic solution but added that Moscow would continue pursuing the objectives of what it calls its “special military operation” until such an agreement is reached.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is facing one of the harshest winters of the war as Russia continues missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure. Prolonged power outages and heating shortages have affected hundreds of thousands of people in Kyiv and other cities amid freezing temperatures.
Ukraine says the attacks show Moscow is not genuinely committed to peace, a claim Russia denies. Moscow argues that its advances have come at significant cost.
New US Participant in Talks On the Russian side, Putin, Ushakov and Dmitriev attended the Moscow meeting. The US delegation included Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Josh Gruenbaum, recently appointed as a senior adviser to Trump’s Board of Peace, which aims to address global conflicts.
The talks are part of President Trump’s push to end the war, now nearing its fourth year and considered Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two.
Trump said on Wednesday that both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would be “stupid” if they failed to reach an agreement.
Witkoff said ahead of the Moscow talks that months of negotiations had narrowed the dispute to a single key issue, widely understood to be territory.
Russia is demanding that Ukraine give up areas of eastern Donetsk still under Ukrainian control, a demand Kyiv has rejected. Moscow also insists that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO and opposes any future deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine.
After meeting Trump in Switzerland on Thursday, Zelenskiy said security guarantees for Ukraine had been finalised, but territorial issues remain unresolved.
Ushakov praised the US for arranging the Abu Dhabi talks, expressing hope that the meeting would lead to progress toward ending the conflict.
