Reports that Ukraine, Russia and the United States would hold a second round of trilateral peace talks on Sunday (1 February) failed to materialise. The reason for the delay is unclear, while one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senior envoys held discussions with US officials in Florida without Ukrainian participation.
“The dates for the next trilateral meetings have been set — February 4 and 5 in Abu Dhabi”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
Meanwhile, Russia has continued to strike civilian targets and infrastructure throughout the negotiating process. On Sunday, a Russian drone attack on a bus carrying mine workers in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region killed at least 12 people. Earlier the same day, a separate drone strike in the region killed a man and a woman, according to officials. Russia, which occupies roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, is pressing for full control of the eastern Donetsk region as part of any settlement.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv and “various towns” during the cold weather, an arrangement the Kremlin said would last until Sunday.
The terms of the reported agreement remain unclear, and the Kremlin did not explicitly link the supposed truce to weather conditions.
Source: commonspace.eu with The Moscow Times and other agencies
