KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A new round of U.S.-brokered talks on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine will continue this week after a brief delay, a senior Kremlin official said Monday, amid ongoing fighting on the front lines and deadly long-range attacks in rear areas.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the trilateral talks will take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi, where a meeting was held last month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he would send a delegation to the meeting, which was originally scheduled for the weekend but was postponed due to what Peskov said was a scheduling conflict.
The Trump administration has spent the past year pushing both sides to find compromise. But as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor approaches later this month, breaking the deadlock on key issues appears to be no closer.
Peskov described the talks as “very complex.”
“On some issues we do get closer because there’s discussion, dialogue, and it’s easier to find common ground on some issues,” he told reporters. “There are some issues where it’s harder to find common ground.”
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev held talks with U.S. officials in Miami, Florida over the weekend, but Peskov declined to provide any details of the meeting.
A key sticking point is whether Russia can hold on to the Ukrainian territory its troops have captured, particularly the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine. Moscow also claims other Ukrainian lands it has failed to capture.
Russian drones and missiles continue to bomb civilian areas, with the latest major airstrike on Sunday killing 12 miners inside a bus. The barrage also disrupted Ukraine’s power grid, leaving people without heat, lighting and running water during the cold winter.
Defense Minister Mikhailo Fedorov said on Monday that authorities were taking steps to prevent Russia from using the Starlink satellite service to guide drones to their targets.
Fedorov asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help prevent Russia from using the service in Ukraine. Starlink is a global Internet network that relies on approximately 10,000 satellites orbiting the Earth.
Fedorov said that Ukraine requires civilian and military Starlink users to register their terminals in the database, allowing approved equipment to operate, while unregistered terminals will be banned within Ukraine.
“It looks like the steps we’ve taken to stop Russia’s unauthorized use of Starlink have worked,” Musk said on X on Sunday. “Let us know if we need to take more action.”
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Litvinova is from Tallinn, Estonia.
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