Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. delegations held their first U.S.-mediated talks in nine months on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi to discuss ending the four-and-a-half-year-old war. The session lasted four hours, and a second day was scheduled for Wednesday; the Guardian also reported that the first day ended after four hours. [E1][E2][E8]
Delegations from Moscow and Kyiv met with Washington represented by Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff, as the United States renewed its push to stop the fighting. [E7]
Neither U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the meeting in Abu Dhabi. [E6]
Zelenskyy said the talks were largely about humanitarian issues, including prisoner exchanges and the return of Ukrainian civilians in captivity and children taken from Ukraine. [E5]
Zelenskyy called the four-hour session “constructive and quite substantive” and said it included humanitarian and security issues. [E9]
Rubio called the talks “very productive” while urging patience, saying substantial work remained and a solution was not close within the next 24 hours. [E3][E4]