Ukraine Talks End in Abu Dhabi With a Prisoner Swap Agreed but No Path Yet to Peace

Two days of US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi ended on Wednesday with one concrete result and no breakthrough on ending the war. The two sides agreed in principle on a large-scale prisoner exchange that the American envoy Jared Kushner described as the "biggest humanitarian release of prisoners" of the conflict, with the final numbers to be settled on Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said negotiators had discussed exchanging 1,000 prisoners from each side, or possibly 1,500. The talks, held on Tuesday and Wednesday, were the first direct three-way meeting between the warring parties since February, and the prisoner deal is the first tangible outcome of a diplomatic process that has produced little else in nine months.

The narrowness of the result was evident in what was not agreed. There was no ceasefire, no agreement on territory, and no new European security framework, despite two days of discussion in which the American side said it saw "some openings" but "no hint of any breakthroughs". The second session lasted less than two hours, after a first day of about four hours, and the American envoys described the meetings as "very substantive" but "pretty tough". Russia's chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said mutual understanding had been reached on some issues but not on others, and that more negotiations would be held. The central topic, according to Medinsky, was a future European security system, on which the sides found common ground in some areas and none in others.

Territory remains the obstacle that neither side is willing to move on. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine give up the parts of the eastern Donbas region it still holds, roughly 2,000 square miles, while Kyiv wants to freeze the fighting along the current contact line. Medinsky declared after the talks that "every inch of our land will be returned to Russia, one way or another", and told Russian state television there was "no possibility" of territorial exchanges. Kushner was blunt about the difficulty, telling reporters that the territorial issues "will be the hardest" to resolve, and that any peacetime security framework is contingent on the war ending, which cannot happen "until there's an agreement on territory and on all other bilateral issues". The American side has floated redrawing the borders of the two Donbas provinces so that territory still held by Ukraine is transferred to adjacent provinces Russia does not claim, but there is no sign either side has accepted it.

The diplomacy now moves to Moscow and Dublin. Kushner and the other American envoy, Steve Witkoff, are due to fly to Moscow on Thursday to meet President Vladimir Putin, where Kushner said he hoped to finalise the prisoner exchange, and then to Dublin to debrief President Zelenskyy, who is in the Irish capital for a European Political Community summit. Kushner said he thought "it would be great" for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet in person, but that "the Russians have said they would like to see more progress made before that happens". "Clearly, there's not great trust or love between the leaders," he added. "The reality is there is no trust right now between the sides and that is to be expected after a conflict like this." Zelenskyy, who was not in the room in Abu Dhabi, said Ukraine's priority was "to end the war as soon as possible with a dignified peace" and insisted that "Europe must be represented at every stage of real diplomacy".

Europe's absence from the negotiating table was itself one of the week's arguments. Officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Union were in Abu Dhabi for separate meetings with the American and Ukrainian teams, but Russia insisted the negotiations remain trilateral, and the Europeans took no part in the direct sessions. Kushner said Washington wanted "to get the Europeans added to the format so that we can make this a multilateral format" and hoped Putin would "give his blessing" to the expansion. Medinsky was cool on the idea, telling reporters: "We do not really understand what there is to discuss with them. We have not received a single peace initiative or a single concrete peace proposal from European countries." A German government spokesman said agreements could not be implemented "if no consensus can be reached among Nato members", and said an understanding on "broad outlines" had been reached among European, American and Ukrainian officials, though not with Russia.

The limits of the talks were underlined within hours of their ending. Russia and Ukraine exchanged strikes on each other's capitals early on Thursday, with explosions heard in Kyiv in the early hours, according to a Reuters witness, and Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure continued through the talks themselves, cutting power in eight regions. Online, attention followed the fighting rather than the diplomacy: a thread on r/ukraine about a Ukrainian strike on Russia's Ust-Luga Baltic oil terminal drew more than 1,700 upvotes on 11 November, the day the talks closed. Davyd Arakhamia, a member of Ukraine's negotiating team, called the round "one of the hardest", saying the Russians "came with very strict directives", but added that he felt "good momentum" and urged that a second round be organised as soon as possible, with a view to reaching a solution by the end of the year. For the families of prisoners, the exchange agreed in Abu Dhabi is real and immediate. For the war itself, the talks ended where they began: with the two sides still far apart on the land, the ceasefire and the security order that would have to follow.