KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The next round of peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday.
Envoys from Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. had been expected to meet that day in Abu Dhabi, to continue negotiations aimed at ending Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.
“We have just had a report from our negotiating team. The dates for the next trilateral meetings have been set: Feb. 4 and 5 in Abu Dhabi. Ukraine is ready for substantive talks, and we are interested in an outcome that will bring us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. or Russian officials.
On Saturday afternoon, top Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said he had held a “constructive meeting with the U.S. peacemaking delegation” in Florida.
Officials have so far revealed few details of the talks in Abu Dhabi, which are part of a yearlong effort by the Trump administration to steer the sides toward a peace deal and end almost four years of all-out war.
While Ukrainian and Russian officials have agreed in principle with Washington’s calls for a compromise, Moscow and Kyiv differ deeply over what an agreement should look like.
A central issue is whether Russia should keep or withdraw from areas of Ukraine its forces have occupied, especially Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called the Donbas, and whether it should get land there that it hasn’t yet captured.
Drones strike Ukrainian maternity hospital
Elsewhere, Russian attack drones struck a maternity hospital in southern Ukraine on Sunday morning, the Ukrainian emergency service reported. In a Telegram post, it said the strike wounded three women in the hospital in the city of Zaporizhzhia, and also sparked a fire in the gynecology reception area that was later extinguished.
Days earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump said Putin had agreed to temporarily halt the targeting of the Ukrainian capital and other cities, as the region suffers under freezing temperatures that have brought widespread hardship to Ukrainians.
The Kremlin confirmed Friday it agreed to hold off striking Kyiv until Sunday, but refused to reveal any details, making it difficult for an independent assessment of whether the conciliatory step had indeed taken place.
In the past week, Russia has struck energy assets in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and in Kharkiv in the northeast. It also hit the Kyiv region on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring four.
Overnight into Sunday, Russia launched 90 attack drones, with 14 striking nine locations, Ukraine’s air force said in a Telegram post. A woman and a man were killed in an overnight drone strike in Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine, according to local administration head Oleksandr Hanzha.
Russian shelling also hit central Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine, soon after 7 a.m. local time, seriously wounding a 59-year-old woman, according to a Facebook post by the municipal military administration.
