Russia reiterates its demand that Ukraine leave its territory as the first trilateral talks with the United States begin

As the first trilateral talks between Ukrainian, Russian and American officials were scheduled to begin Friday in Abu Dhabi, Moscow made clear that Russia is not prepared to back down from Vladimir Putin’s demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the eastern Donbas region as a precondition for a peace deal.

“Russia’s position is well known: Ukraine and its armed forces must leave the Donbass. They must withdraw,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, referring to the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine, much of which Russia has occupied during the war. war of almost four years. “This is a very important condition.”

Speaking on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said The fate of Russian-occupied territory in his country was the latest issue standing in the way of a ceasefire agreement.

After President Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, earlier said the negotiations were “boiled down to one issue” but declined to elaborate, Zelenskyy told reporters: “It’s about the eastern part of our country. It’s about land… This is the issue that [have] It’s not resolved yet.”

It is the same crucial disagreement that crushed hopes of a peace agreement at the end of last year.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after unilaterally annexing another part of Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula, in 2014. After staging elections dismissed by most of the world as a sham in the occupied parts of the Donbas region, Putin declared in September 2022 that Russia had also annexed four regions of eastern Ukraine. None of the annexations have been recognized by the United States or the United Nations, and most countries consider them illegal land grabs.

The large-scale conflict lasting nearly four years has killed tens of thousands of people, and Russian forces continue to make small but gradual gains in the Donbas as Ukraine struggles to defend its territory with support from the United States and Europe.

“The Donbas issue is key,” Zelenskyy told reporters early Friday. “It will be discussed and the modalities, as seen by the three parties, will be addressed in Abu Dhabi today and tomorrow.”

The mere fact that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are meeting US envoys for the first time on Friday has been taken as a sign of some progress, but there has yet to be any sign of movement on the territorial issue.

Putin has repeatedly threatened to take full control of the Donbas region if peace talks fail.

Ukraine, backed by its European partners and the head of NATO, has warned that ceding territory to Russia would embolden Moscow to potentially carry out future attacks on its own territory and potentially neighboring nations.

Zelenskyy’s administration has refused to sign any peace deal that formally cedes occupied lands to Russia, and is also seeking a guarantee that the United States would intervene if Russia tries to launch another invasion in the future.

The only way, Zelenskyy said Thursday, to deter Russia from such future aggression is a Western security guarantee that includes an American “backstop.”

“The United Kingdom and France are ready to commit their forces on the ground” to monitor a ceasefire agreement, he said in Davos, at an event during the World Economic Forum, “but President Trump’s backing is needed. And again, no security guarantee works without the United States.”

Zelenskyy said on Friday that he had had a “really positive meeting with President Trump and his team” in Davos, and that “the main and central agreement on security guarantees is ready. Now I am waiting for President Trump to indicate the date and place. That is up to him. We are ready to sign documents that are extremely important for us.”