MOSCOW/ABU DHABI: Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator on Ukraine, said on Wednesday that a peace settlement seemed to be closer after two days of talks in Abu Dhabi.
‘I think so yes,’ he said when asked by a Russian state TV reporter if a peace deal was now closer. ‘But at the moment, a great deal depends on all those involved in the process. A great deal depends on Ukraine, on the US stance, and on whether Europe comes to its senses, he added.
Medinsky and Ukrainian negotiators had earlier reported some progress in the talks that ended on Wednesday, but US mediators said there was a lack of trust between the warring sides and differences remained on issues including territory.
He told reporters the ‘discussion will certainly continue’. But he questioned including Europe in the talks.
‘We don’t really understand what there is to talk about with them. We have not received a single peace initiative, not one concrete proposal from the European countries,’ he said. Medinsky said that Moscow’s aim is a ‘new, modern Yalta and Potsdam’referring to the 1945 conferences that saw Western leaders divide Europe with the USSR’s Joseph Stalin.
US envoys to meet Putin US envoys will separately meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday as they seek to seize ‘openings’ from two days of talks in Abu Dhabi on ending the Ukraine war. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will travel first to Moscow to meet the Russian president, before flying to Dublin where Zelensky will attend European meetings to debrief the Ukrainian leader.
The countries agreed in Abu Dhabi to a major prisoner exchange the ‘biggest’ ever, according to Kushner though no side gave any figures. But the talks the first since February, when the US war in Iran halted diplomacy also revealed deep splits over the role Europe should play in future talks.
All sides talked up progress and said talks would continue, though Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov said ‘significant differences remain’.
Kushner said the meeting with Putin would ‘go over what was discussed today and try to make more progress on some of the issues that we discussed because we see some openings and some opportunities’.
With Zelensky, the pair will ‘further explore some of the ideas that we came up with here today’. Umerov said that there was ‘still a lot of difficult work ahead, but there are opportunities to continue the negotiation process’.
Biggest ever release of POWs Russia and Ukraine have agreed their biggest ever release of prisoners after two days of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi, US envoy Jared Kushner told reporters on Wednesday. ‘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,’ he said.
Kushner and fellow US mediator Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow on Thursday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then to Dublin to debrief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.-AFP