Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Wednesday that negotiators at US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi reached a humanitarian arrangement to prepare a new prisoner exchange and discussed security guarantees as well as broader negotiating formats involving European partners. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian officials will meet US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in Dublin on Thursday after the Americans travel to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that ending the war and securing guarantees for Ukraine must be the first step.
Chief Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said after the two-day sessions concluded that Moscow’s demands extend to a new continental security system across Europe rather than Ukraine alone. “The security system in Europe works very badly. The entire organism is sick. Ukraine is just an abscess that burst. The organism must be cured as a whole, a band-aid will not be enough,” Medinsky said, adding that “every inch of our land will be returned to Russia, one way or another.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen countered that “any meaningful discussions about Europe’s security architecture can only be undertaken once a ceasefire in Ukraine has been achieved.”
