Dhabi

Jan. 23 (UPI) — Tri-lateral talks on ending the Ukraine war between Russia, Ukraine and the United States were due to get underway in Abu Dhabi on Friday evening, the first time all three countries have been at the same table since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The meeting follows four hours of late-night talks between U.S. negotiators, led by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that the Kremlin said had been “substantive, constructive and very frank.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has dispatched a negotiating team to Abu Dhabi for the meeting, which he said would last for two days, described the talks as “a step — hopefully towards ending the war.”

Both sides cautioned that there could be no durable peace until there was a resolution to thorny territorial issues, notably the Donbas, where Russia is demanding Ukraine relinquish the remaining land it still controls — about 25%.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the Russian side had made it clear to Witkoff that no long-term solution should be expected to be achieved in the absence of a territory deal based on the “formula” agreed at the U.S.-Russia summit in Anchorage in August.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the summit to get a cease-fire but ended up with a loose agreement to end the war through Ukraine giving up territory in exchange for Russia agreeing to accept NATO-style security guarantees for Ukraine — putting the onus on Kyiv.

Ushakov said Russia was genuine in its desire to resolve the conflict through “political and diplomatic means” but until then it fully intended to continue to pursue the goals of its “special military operation” on the battlefield, where it was winning.

Speaking in Davos on Thursday, Zelensky also said the whole process hinged on land.

“It’s all about the land. This is the issue which is not solved yet. The Russians have to be ready for compromises, not only Ukraine,” Zelensky said after meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, where he claimed post-war security guarantees had been finalized.

He said Friday’s Russia-Ukraine-U.S. talks might produce “variants” on how to solve the issue, referencing the Russian demand for Kyiv to pull back its troops from parts of its Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (the Donbas), on one side, and a U.S. proposal for those areas to form a demilitarized “economic” zone in exchange for security guarantees for Ukraine.

With Russia ruling out a cease-fire in the interim, an end to the fighting could be some way off.

Ukraine’s constitution requires that any deal of such consequence as ceding land must be ratified by Ukrainian lawmakers, and possibly the Ukrainian people in a referendum, while a security guarantee involving the United States would have to be authorized by Congress.