Russia and Ukraine agreed to a large prisoner-of-war exchange as two days of U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi ended Wednesday without a major breakthrough on ending Moscow’s nearly five-year-old full-scale invasion, the BBC, Reuters and Al Jazeera reported. The meetings were the first between the warring sides since February.
U.S. envoy Jared Kushner, who mediated the talks with special envoy Steve Witkoff, said the number of prisoners to be released would be finalized on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported. Russian state news agency TASS, cited by Reuters, quoted Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin as saying the exchange could take place in two to three weeks and would consist of more than 1,000 captives on each side. Kushner and Witkoff will travel to Moscow on Thursday to meet President Vladimir Putin and then to Dublin to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, neither of whom attended the sessions.
Davyd Arakhamia of Ukraine’s negotiating team told the BBC the round “was one of the hardest,” saying he believed “the Russians came with very strict directives.” He cited “good momentum” and urged another round soon. Reuters reported that he also said the next talks should be multilateral, with Europe represented.
Kremlin negotiator Vladimir Medinsky was more reserved. “Right now… a lot depends on Ukraine, on the position of the U.S., and on whether Europe comes to its senses,” he said, according to the BBC. Reuters reported that he said the sides had reached a common understanding on some points of a potential European security framework and not on others.
Territory remains a core obstacle, especially in eastern Donetsk, which is mostly occupied by Russia, the BBC reported. Kyiv wants to freeze the contact line to keep the areas it still holds, which it says are essential to its security. Moscow continues to demand that Ukraine relinquish those areas. “Every inch” of land would be “returned to Russia one way or another,” Medinsky said, according to the BBC.
Kushner said territorial issues would be the hardest to settle and that “the reality is there is no trust right now between the sides.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said wider security talks should follow a ceasefire, Reuters reported, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has rejected a truce, saying Europeans were seeking breathing space for Ukraine.
Fighting continued during the talks. A Russian strike on a market in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Wednesday killed three people and injured 11 others, the regional governor said, according to Reuters, which said it could not independently verify the reports.