{"id":2058,"date":"2026-02-06T01:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/?p=2058"},"modified":"2026-02-06T01:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:35:08","slug":"abu-dhabi-talks-offer-small-signs-of-movement-as-ukraine-and-russia-exchange-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/abu-dhabi-talks-offer-small-signs-of-movement-as-ukraine-and-russia-exchange-prisoners\/2058\/","title":{"rendered":"Abu Dhabi talks offer small signs of movement as Ukraine and Russia exchange prisoners"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of a second round of United States-led negotiations in Abu Dhabi on Thursday, Ukraine and Russia did not make any breakthrough to end the conflict, which is now seen as the deadliest war in Europe since the World War II<\/a>. Although the talks failed to bring a larger peace accord, the two parties did come to a small, yet concrete, end result as they agreed to the exchange of prisoners of war between each other.<\/p>\n

Each party shall send back 157 prisoners according to the agreement, which is a feat as one of the few tangible outcomes to come out of the negotiations. Although this happened, the anticipations of a fast progress towards achieving a comprehensive settlement were subdued by remarks of Steve Witkoff<\/a>, the U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> special envoy handling the discussions. According to Witkoff, there was still a lot of work to be done and that much more intense work yet lay ahead within the next few weeks, which implies that the conflict will not be resolved soon.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the conferences indicated the largest involvement of higher delegations between Kyiv and Moscow in months. The observers have viewed this degree of participation as a prudent measure of a new surfacing of diplomatic activity almost four years into the war, though it is still unclear whether there will be any concrete improvement.<\/p>\n

The session on Thursday took about three hours and it was preceded by a round of trilateral talks on Wednesday which lasted about five and a half hours. Kyrylo Budanov<\/a>, the leader of the presidential office of Ukraine, said the trilateral talks were sincpely positive. He also appreciated the contribution made by the United States and the United Arab Emirates towards the dialogue. The attitude of the Russian official at the negotiations, Kirill Dmitriev<\/a>, was also positive and he said that it had come a long way and the talks were characterized as reflecting forward motion towards the end of the war.<\/p>\n

Later on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a> confirmed that talks would not stop soon, meaning that the ongoing round of talks was not to be a conclusive attempt. Both Ukraine and Russia have dispatched senior military and intelligence officials to Abu Dhabi which is seen as a more serious tactic than in previous rounds of discussions, where Russia had frequently been represented by lower-rank officials.<\/p>\n

The format itself was emphasized by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> who on Wednesday said that, the first time in a long time, direct meetings between technical military teams of both Ukraine and Russia were being held with U.S. involvement. Rubio was cautious though that it would be hard to gauge tangible progress until a real breakthrough was achieved. He stressed the fact that the United States was still determined to the diplomatic process although the result of it was uncertain.<\/p>\n

Even with this more positive atmosphere of the discussions, significant challenges still exist. Moscow has also been demanding some extensive territorial demands, and it has insisted in a peace agreement that Ukraine should give up the entire eastern Donbas<\/a> and even those still in the control of Ukraine. Ukrainian leaders have denied these requests and they instead propose a ceasefire along the existing lines, and eliminate any unilateral withdrawal in the eastern sides of Ukraine where fortified cities constitute an important component of the Kyiv defenses.<\/p>\n

The question remains as to whether the Russian President, Vladimir Putin<\/a> is ready to compromise. Putin<\/a> has repeatedly spoken that Russia is winning the war and has said he is ready to fight until Ukraine meets the demands of Moscow that have also included a restriction on the size of the Ukrainian military and prohibition of the presence of Western troops.<\/p>\n

In the battlefield, Russia has already made slower progress this year than at the end of the previous one and has been stalled by freezing down temperatures and Ukrainian insurgency. However, Russian troops have maintained attacks on the power system in Ukraine, leading to long-term power outages in many portions of the nation and raising the humanitarian cost of the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the end of a second round of United States-led negotiations in Abu Dhabi on Thursday, Ukraine and Russia did\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":2060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2058"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2062,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions\/2062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}