KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A new round of U.S.-brokered talks on ending Russia’s war on Ukraine is set to go ahead this week after a brief postponement, a senior Kremlin official said Monday, with negotiations taking place against a backdrop of continued front-line fighting and deadly long-range attacks on rear areas.
The trilateral talks will take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi, where a previous meeting was held last month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that he would be sending a delegation to the meeting, which initially was to be held at the weekend but was delayed by what Peskov said were scheduling conflicts.
The Trump administration has over the past year pushed the two sides to find compromises. But breaking the deadlock on key issues appears no closer as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor approaches later this month.
Peskov described the talks as “very complex.”
“On some issues, we have certainly come closer because there have been discussions, conversations, and on some issues it is easier to find common ground,” he told reporters. “There are issues where it’s more difficult to find common ground.”
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev was in Miami, Florida, at the weekend for talks with American officials, but Peskov refused to provide any details of the meeting.
A key sticking point is whether Russia gets to keep the Ukrainian territory its army has occupied, especially in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. Moscow is also demanding possession of other Ukrainian land there that it hasn’t been able to capture.
Russian drones and missiles have continued to bombard civilian areas , killing 12 miners in a bus on Sunday in the most recent mass aerial attack. The barrages have also wrecked the Ukrainian power grid, leaving people without heating, light and running water in bitter winter cold.
Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Monday that authorities are taking steps to prevent Russia using Starlink satellite services to steer its drones toward their targets.
Fedorov asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help deny Russia use of the service in Ukraine. Starlink is a global internet network that relies on around 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth.
Ukraine is requiring civilian and military Starlink users to register their terminals on a database, allowing approved devices to function while unregistered terminals would be disabled inside Ukraine, Fedorov said.
“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” Musk said Sunday on X. “Let us know if more needs to be done.”
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Litvinova contributed from Tallinn, Estonia.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine