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Zelensky says negotiations will focus on status of eastern Donbas region as search for elusive agreement on territory continues
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Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Vladimir Putin must be ready to end the war he started, as the first day of landmark peace talks concluded.
The three-way negotiations held in Abu Dhabi between Ukraine, Russia and the US mark the first such talks since the war erupted in February 2022.
As the first day ended on Friday, the Ukrainian president said in his evening address to the nation: “The key is that Russia must be ready to end the war it started.”
The three countries continue to search for an elusive agreement on territory, with the Kremlin earlier in the day making clear its “very important condition” that Kyiv give up the Donbas.
Zelensky told reporters the talks will focus on the eastern Donbas, which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are largely – but not entirely – occupied by Russia.
The negotiations are “scheduled to continue over two days, as part of ongoing efforts to promote dialogue and identify political solutions to the crisis”, the UAE’s foreign ministry said.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have said the talks will be attended by military intelligence officials. US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to mediate.
The Ukrainian president said he hoped the talks would prove to be a “step towards ending the war”. But the negotiations come after he berated European leaders on Thursday, demanding material action against Russian aggression, in a fiery Davos speech that suggested he does not believe an imminent resolution is likely.
A man fighting for the life of his country against an invader should be forgiven the passion and colour of his language when calling for help from his friends.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s stinging rhetoric was very much his own at Davos when he called Europe a “salad”.
“Dear friends, we should not degrade ourselves to secondary roles, not when we have a chance to be a great power together. We should not accept that Europe is just a salad of small and middle powers, seasoned with enemies of Europe,” the Ukrainian president thundered.
The World Economic Forum was silent at the rebuke. Global leaders, business titans, European bureaucrats, squirmed.
Here they were faced with the grizzled figure that Vladimir Putin’s special forces have consistently failed to kill, who leads a nation freezing at home at -20C while its soldiers defend Europe and had to swallow their diminished proportions.
In the middle of Ukraine’s fiercest winter of the war, many Ukrainians are unable to prepare hot meals or are unable to heat their homes while temperatures have dipped as low as -20C in the past few weeks. Harsher weather is forecast.
Russia has once again targeted Ukraine with sustained attacks on power stations, energy grids and heating nodes affecting electricity, as well as heating systems and water pumps.
Following the Russian strikes on January 20, around 5,600 apartment buildings in Kyiv were left without heating and almost half of Kyiv was believed to be without heat and power, affecting around one million people. The situation is so dire that the city has set up “heating tents” to help people stay warm in the freezing temperatures. Other cities have also been attacked.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky declared the situation an energy emergency.
Finnish president Alexander Stubb has branded Russia’s war in Ukraine a “complete strategic failure for Vladimir Putin” in a scathing attack on the Russian leader.
Speaking at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Stubb said Putin’s war in Ukraine has only served to strengthen European integration, unity and defence investment.
“This war has become a complete strategic failure for Vladimir Putin,” Mr Stubb said. “He expanded Nato, he made Ukraine European, and he forced European states to increase their defence budgets. And now we are asking ourselves whether we are capable of defending ourselves. My answer is yes.”
Alex Croft reports:
Hours before Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Donald Trump behind closed doors for about an hour at the World Economic Forum in Davos, describing the meeting as “productive and meaningful.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew back to Washington from Davos, Trump said the meeting went well, adding that both Putin and Zelensky wanted to reach a deal and that “everyone’s making concessions” to try to end the war.
He said the sticking points remained the same as during the talks held over the past six or seven months, adding that “boundaries” was a key issue. “The main hold-up is the same things that’s been holding it up for the last year,” he said.
Russia’s army has managed to capture about 20 per cent of Ukraine since hostilities began in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022. But the battlefield gains along the roughly 1,000km frontline have been costly for Moscow, and the Russian economy is feeling the consequences of the war and international sanctions.
Ukraine is short of money and, despite significantly boosting its own arms manufacturing, still needs Western weaponry. It is also short-handed on the front line. Its defence minister last week reported some 200,000 troop desertions, and draft-dodging by about 2 million Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s energy situation “significantly” worsened on Friday after the latest Russian air attacks, triggering emergency power outages in most regions, Kyiv’s grid operator said.
The grim assessment followed a remark by energy minister Denys Shmyhal on Thursday that Ukraine’s energy system had endured its most difficult day since a widespread blackout in November 2022, when Russia began bombing the power grid.
Several power generation facilities were undergoing emergency repairs following combined drone and missile attacks, Ukrenergo said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The equipment is operating at the limits of its capabilities,” it said, pointing to “tremendous” overload due to earlier damage from Russian strikes.
In his latest comments, Shmyhal said there were significant power shortages, but added: “Thanks to the coordinated actions of Ukrenergo and distribution system operators, we are seeing a trend towards partial stabilisation.”
“We plan to gradually switch from emergency shutdowns to hourly ones in the coming days,” he said on Telegram.
Volodymyr Zelensky said the Ukrainian delegation at the talks reported to him “almost every hour”, speaking in his evening address to the nation late Friday.
Friday is the first known time that officials from the Trump administration simultaneously met with negotiators from both Ukraine and Russia. While it’s unclear how the talks will unfold and many obstacles to peace remain, some see it as a sign that the parties are making headway in closing a deal.
“They are discussing the parameters for ending the war,” Zelensky said. “Now, they should at least get some answers from Russia, and the most important thing is that Russia should be ready to end this war, which it itself started”.
He added that it was too early to draw conclusions about Friday’s talks and he would see how they go on Saturday.
“It’s not just about Ukraine’s desire to end this war and achieve full security — it’s also about Russia somehow developing a similar desire,” Zelensky said.
Moscow’s proposal to use frozen Russian assets to help fund reconstruction on its own territory, particularly the Kursk region, was “nonsense”, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Speaking to reporters in a WhatsApp media chat, he said Kyiv would “fight” to be able to use all frozen Russian assets to fund post-war recovery inside Ukraine.
Russian drones attacked several districts in Kharkiv overnight, striking a dormitory for displaced people, a hospital and a maternity hospital, mayor Ihor Terekhov said. At least 11 people were reported injured.
Kharkiv, a city in the northeast about 30km from the border, has been a frequent Russian target during the war.
Russian drones also targeted the capital Kyiv in the early hours today, injuring two people.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the injured people were in serious condition. He said there had been strikes in two districts on either side of the Dnipro river bisecting the capital.
“Kyiv is under a massive enemy attack,” Klitschko wrote on his official Telegram channel.
The latest attacks came hours after negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the United States completed the first of two days of talks in the United Arab Emirates devoted to working towards a resolution of the nearly four-year-old war.
Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te offered talks with Ukraine to crack down on sanctions-busting after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky name-checked the island as a source of illicit missile components.
Speaking in Davos on Thursday, Zelensky said Russia would not be able to produce missiles without “critical components sourced from China, Europe, the United States, and Taiwan”, according to excerpts published on his website.
Responding on his X account in English, Lai said Taiwan has long worked with global partners to “staunchly support Ukraine through humanitarian aid & coordinated sanctions”.
“We welcome further exchanges of information with President @ZelenskyyUa to further clamp down on illegal 3rd country transshipment & concealed end-use,” he said, posting a picture of orchids in the colours of Ukraine’s flag.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, semiconductor powerhouse Taiwan has successively updated export controls to stop high-tech goods being used for military purposes, and has joined wide-ranging Western-led sanctions against Moscow.
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