US, Russia and Ukraine to restart talks in Abu Dhabi

Peace talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US are getting underway in the United Arab Emirates. It is the first such meeting since February. DW has the latest updates.

Moscow and Kyiv have widely divergent demands regarding the conflict in Ukraine, which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to pull its forces out of Donetsk , Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which are the regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 without seizing all the territory they contain. He also says Ukraine must give up its aspirations to join NATO, limit the size of its military capability and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out yielding any territory that Russia has failed to take with military means. He also refuses to accept any limits on the size of Ukraine's armed forces or restrictions on the alliances it strikes with Western partners.