Peace negotiations today in Abu Dhabi, amid Moscow's unleashed attacks against Ukraine / Why Zelensky is pessimistic, before talks with Russia

Ukrainians and Russians will sit down at the same table again on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss ending the war. However, Volodymyr Zelensky blamed the attacks on Ukrainian cities, noting that Russia does not want peace, Reuters and the Ukrainian publication Pravda write.

Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the United States are due to meet in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday in what they say is a bid to make progress in talks to end the four-year war.

The latest round of talks in this format – also held in Abu Dhabi on January 24 – was greeted with vague optimism but failed to lead to a quick agreement to end Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II, which began with Russia's invasion in February 2022.

The main sticking point remains the long-term fate of the territory in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow is demanding that Kiev withdraw its troops from areas it still controls in Donbas, including heavily fortified towns, as a precondition for any deal.

It also wants international recognition that the territories occupied following the invasion now belong to Russia.

Kiev has said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and rejected a unilateral withdrawal of forces.

Russia launched massive attacks even before the talks, striking Ukrainian cities with hundreds of drones and missiles on Tuesday.

Two people were killed and two wounded in a Russian drone attack on the Sinelnikove district of Dnipropetrovsk region on the night of February 3-4.

Witkoff and Kushner will be present for the negotiations

The White House announced on Tuesday that the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will participate in the trilateral negotiations with Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian Pravda writes.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had initially stated that the two would not participate in this round of negotiations.

“Special Envoy Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be in Abu Dhabi tomorrow for another round of trilateral talks,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.

Noting that the latest trilateral talks held in late January “are historic in nature,” Leavitt said the three countries have never been able to “sit down at the negotiating table to take steps forward toward peace.”

“So special envoy Jared Kushner and President (Donald) Trump have made the impossible possible on Middle East peace, and I know they intend to do the same on the war between Russia and Ukraine,” she said.

Trump says Putin kept his word

A day before the new round of talks, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of taking advantage of the US-backed energy truce to stockpile ammunition and use it in an attack on Ukraine – hundreds of drones and a record number of ballistic missiles.

Zelensky said Ukraine is awaiting the US reaction to Russia's overnight attack, which damaged Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

But US President Donald Trump told reporters that Russian President Vladimir Putin had struck a deal that expired on Sunday.

“It was Sunday to Sunday, and then it started and hit them hard last night,” he said at the White House. “He kept his word on that, we'll take anything, because it's very, very cold out there,” Trump said.

Asked if he was disappointed, Trump said: “I want him to end the war.”

Russia's attack cut off heating in cities, including the capital Kiev, in bitterly cold conditions, even as Ukrainian negotiators headed to Abu Dhabi.

“It was a deliberate attack on energy infrastructure, which involved a record number of ballistic missiles,” Zelenskiy wrote on X, a day after he said Moscow had largely respected a bilateral moratorium on energy installations.

“The Russian military exploited the US proposal to temporarily suspend attacks, not to support diplomacy, but to replenish its missile stocks,” he said

Zelensky's reluctance

Ukraine is under pressure from the US to accept a peace deal, while Russian attacks on its energy system appear to be aimed at freezing the Ukrainians into accepting a compromise.

Tightening his tone from previous days, Zelensky said on Tuesday that the work of Ukrainian negotiators would be “adjusted accordingly” after the attack, but gave no details.

Speaking in Kiev at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, he said Ukraine would contact Washington to discuss further consequences for Russia.

Zelensky said he expected Ukraine to make concessions, but that Russia also needed to make concessions, mainly “to stop aggression”.

And if the United States and Europe did not have the power to stop Russian attacks, he asked, “then who will believe that there is the power to guarantee that war will not break out again?”