Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators began addressing territorial issues during two days of talks starting on Friday, with both sides indicating no softening of positions aimed at ending the four-year war.
Territory at centre of negotiations
Ukraine is facing mounting pressure from the United States to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, while Moscow is demanding that Kyiv cede its entire eastern industrial area of Donbas before it stops fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the territorial dispute would be a top priority of the next round of talks in the United Arab Emirates.
“The question of Donbas is key. It will be discussed how the three sides…, see this in Abu Dhabi today and tomorrow,” he said in response to questions in a WhatsApp media chat, a day after talks with US President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos that both leaders described as positive.
A Zelenskiy aide said the talks in the Gulf were due to begin on Friday evening and resume on Saturday morning.
Donetsk and the Donbas dispute
Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Ukraine surrender the 20 per cent it still holds of the Donetsk region in the Donbas, an area of about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles), a position that has proven a major obstacle to a breakthrough deal. Zelenskiy has refused to give up land that Russia has not been able to capture during four years of attritional warfare.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia’s insistence on Ukraine yielding the Donbas was “a very important condition”.
A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Moscow considers a so-called “Anchorage formula”, which Moscow said was agreed between Trump and Putin at a summit last August, to mean Russia controlling all of Donbas and freezing the current front lines elsewhere in Ukraine’s east and south.
Status of Donetsk and trilateral format
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions Moscow said in 2022 it was annexing after referendums rejected by Kyiv and Western nations as bogus. Most countries recognise Donetsk as part of Ukraine. Putin says Donetsk is “historical” Russian territory.
Zelenskiy said on Thursday in Davos that the Abu Dhabi talks would be the first trilateral meetings involving Ukrainian and Russian envoys and US mediators since the war began.
What outcomes do you expect from the Abu Dhabi talks on the territorial dispute?
