First round of trilateral meetings shows ‘a lot of progress’ made towards peace, says US official, despite new Russian attacks. What we know on day 1,432
Ukraine and Russia have agreed to hold a second round of US-brokered direct peace talks next weekend after a two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi, despite Ukrainian complaints that negotiations were undermined by a barrage of deadly strikes. The trilateral talks in the UAE would resume on 1 February, a US official said on Saturday, adding: “I think getting everyone together was a big step. I think it’s a confirmation of the fact that, number one, a lot of progress has been made to date in really defining the details needed to get to a conclusion.” The talks were the first known direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials on a plan being pushed by Donald Trump to end the nearly four-year war. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “a lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive”.
Russia was criticised for launching drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv – Ukraine’s two largest cities – during peace talks in Abu Dhabi, reported Peter Beaumont. “Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure. With Kyiv and other cities in the midst of widespread outages of heat, water and power after Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, officials in the capital said one person had been killed and at least 15 injured in the strikes that continued until morning.
