Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the United States ended a second day of peace talks in the United Arab Emirates after just a few hours on Thursday. Negotiators spoke vaguely of progress, but they had little to show for the discussions, other than a promise to exchange prisoners of war.
Russia and Ukraine agreed to swap 314 prisoners, the first trade since early October, said Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy. Although Mr. Witkoff tried to cast the results of the talks in a positive light, the prisoner exchange represented no particular breakthrough in diplomatic efforts that have stretched on for months under the Trump administration. Ukraine and Russia have regularly exchanged prisoners of war and the remains of the dead for years.
“This outcome was achieved from peace talks that have been detailed and productive,” Mr. Witkoff said on social media, adding, “While significant work remains, steps like this demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine.”
The short length of the talks on Thursday and the apparent lack of concrete outcomes indicate that progress on the toughest obstacles to peace is proving difficult.
Officials did not say what was discussed behind closed doors, but the delegations in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates, had been expected to talk about the two main obstacles to any peace deal: the fate of Ukrainian-controlled territory in the east and guarantees over Ukraine’s postwar security.
The meeting on Thursday, which lasted three hours, followed trilateral negotiations that lasted for about five and a half hours on Wednesday. This round of talks, the first face-to-face negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in months, began with two days of talks late last month in Abu Dhabi.
Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin special envoy and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, told reporters in Abu Dhabi before the talks started on Thursday morning that there was “positive movement forward.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that it was too early to comment on any potential outcome of the talks, adding that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was being briefed regularly.
On Wednesday evening, Rustem Umerov, who leads Ukraine’s delegation and is the secretary of the country’s National Security Council, described the first day of the second round of talks as “meaningful” and said that negotiators had focused on “practical solutions.”
In a speech on Wednesday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine did not mention specifics, but he said that he had talked to the negotiating team and expected an exchange of prisoners in the near future.
Photographs released by the Emirati government on Wednesday showed Mr. Umerov and Kyrylo Budanov, Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, seated with other Ukrainian officials at tables set up in a U shape. Facing them was the Russian delegation, made up of military intelligence figures.
At a third table, between the Russians and the Ukrainians, sat the American delegation, including Mr. Witkoff; Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law; and Daniel P. Driscoll, the Army secretary.
The trilateral talks are the most public sign of progress so far in Mr. Trump’s push to negotiate an end to four years of war after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
After the negotiations ended on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Witkoff said on social media that the trilateral discussions would continue “with additional progress anticipated in the coming weeks.”
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn and Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed reporting.
Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.
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