Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a second round of US-backed trilateral peace talks with Russia is planned for Abu Dhabi on Feb. 4-5, and said Ukraine is prepared for a “substantive discussion” that he hopes will move the country toward a “real and dignified end to the war.”
Neither the Kremlin nor the United States has formally confirmed those dates. The Abu Dhabi meetings had been due to begin on Sunday but were postponed after Russia’s top envoy Kirill Dmitriev reported a “constructive meeting” with a US peacemaking delegation in Florida.
US attendees at the Florida meeting were reported to include President Donald Trump’s peace envoy Steve Witkoff, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum. Witkoff said he was encouraged by Russia’s willingness to work toward peace; neither side released substantive details of the talks.
Officials have provided few details about the Abu Dhabi sessions, which form part of the Trump administration’s effort to end the nearly four-year conflict. The first round of talks in late January did not resolve the core territorial dispute over the Donbas: Russia has demanded Ukrainian forces withdraw from the region, while Kyiv says any territorial concession would only embolden Moscow.
Ahead of the planned talks, Russian forces reportedly agreed to a request from Trump to pause strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during a severe winter. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the limited pause as lasting only until Sunday, saying it would offer a “good basis” for negotiations.
Despite that pause, a Russian drone struck a company shuttle bus carrying mine workers in Dnipropetrovsk region on Sunday, killing 12 and wounding seven, officials and energy firm DTEK said. DTEK called the attack “a large-scale terrorist attack on DTEK mines,” saying one strike hit a bus transporting miners after their shift. Zelenskyy expressed condolences to the victims’ families.
He also reported separate drone strikes that damaged power infrastructure in Nikopol and Marhanets and caused outages, plus attacks on railway infrastructure in the Dnipro and Sumy regions, with railway crews working to repair and restore services. Regional officials earlier reported at least nine people were injured in strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential building in Zaporizhzhia.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko