Russia Says Talks to End War in Ukraine Will Continue

After Reports of Progress, Kremlin Says Ukraine Talks Will ContinueUkrainian and Russian officials left rare direct talks last weekend in a somewhat optimistic mood. But Russia may be simply stalling for time, analysts said.An artillery unit of Ukraine's 59th Assault Brigade firing at Russian positions near the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk last month.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesJan. 26, 2026, 8:31 a.m. ETTalks among Russian, Ukrainian and American officials to end the war in Ukraine are set to resume next week, the Kremlin spokesman said on Monday, after a round of negotiations that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine described as constructive.Two days of talks, the first face-to-face negotiations by Ukraine and Russia since June, wrapped up on Saturday in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Zelensky said on social media on Saturday that more meetings would be held “provided there is readiness to move forward.”On Monday, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters in Moscow that further talks were scheduled for next week, though he did not specify a date. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe diplomatic strategy, said the talks were set for Sunday.Both Ukrainian and Russian officials left the rare direct talks in Abu Dhabi in a somewhat optimistic mood, according to official Ukrainian statements and Russian state media reports. (Ukrainian and Russian officials had last met in June in Istanbul.)On Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said the delegations had discussed an American role in postwar security guarantees for Ukraine and that negotiations on the issue would continue.On Sunday, he said that Ukraine and Russia both should be willing to compromise. But Mr. Peskov, in his remarks Monday, gave little indication that the Kremlin was ready to back down on its full aims in Ukraine.A major sticking point is control of territory in eastern Ukraine. On that question, Mr. Peskov insisted that Moscow would accept nothing less than terms that Russia says were reached by President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin this past summer in Alaska. Russia says the American president agreed to a deal in which Ukraine would surrender parts of the Donbas region that Russian forces have been unable to capture through four years of war.Steve Witkoff, an American envoy who participated in the Abu Dhabi talks, said before those meetings that just one major issue was left to be resolved. Mr. Zelensky said the issue was territory. “It’s all about the eastern part of our country,” he said last week in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum. “It’s all about the land.”In its daily brief on the war in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said the Kremlin may be using the new trilateral talks simply to stall for time, as Moscow has done repeatedly through years of on-again-off-again negotiations.The institute, a policy organization based in Washington, noted that Russia hoped to avoid the additional sanctions that Mr. Trump had threatened if the Kremlin refused to negotiate.The peace process has taken on a greater urgency for Ukraine: Moscow has intensified a bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, leaving hundreds of thousands without power or heating during a brutal Ukrainian winter.As of Sunday evening, more than 1,300 apartment buildings in Kyiv had no power or heat, according to Vitali Klitschko, the city’s mayor.SKIP