ABU DHABI: US envoys will meet separately with 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 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.”
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