By Olena Harmash and Max Hunder
KYIV, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia concluded a second round of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday aimed at ending Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two, with the two sides conducting a major prisoner swap and agreeing to resume negotiations soon.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the delegations from the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia had agreed to an exchange of 314 prisoners of war, which took place on Thursday at the Ukrainian border.
“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,” Witkoff said in a post on X, describing the peace talks as “detailed and productive”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the sides had agreed another meeting in the very near future.
“The conversation is ongoing. It’s certainly not easy, but Ukraine has been and will be as constructive as possible,” Zelenskiy said at a joint news conference in Kyiv on Thursday with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Zelenskiy said the talks covered all the main points of difference between the two sides and the Ukrainian team would deliver their report to him in person because of the sensitivity of the issues.
RUSSIA SEES PROGRESS AND POSITIVE MOVEMENT
Zelenskiy said he was keen for the talks to lead to the end of the four-year war but he repeated his insistence that Ukraine must receive robust security guarantees, including from Washington, to ensure Russia will not attack again.
On Thursday, Russia’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said there was progress and a positive movement. He also said work was underway to restore Russia’s relations with the United States, including within the framework of a U.S.-Russia working group on the economy.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 157 prisoners of war each, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Three civilians from the Kursk region were also returned to Russia.
A video released by Ukraine’s presidency showed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war – many of them wrapped in the national flag – disembarking from buses in the snow, some hugging each other and others crying as they spoke to relatives on mobile phones.
The prisoner exchange comes after a long pause: the previous one happened in October 2025. POW exchanges were the only concrete steps towards peace that emerged from the previous rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia that took place last year in Turkey.
Zelenskiy said he had instructed his negotiating team to discuss further exchanges.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed, wounded, or gone missing during nearly four years of war.
Zelenskiy said this week that about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield, but he gave no details on the number of wounded or missing Ukrainian servicemen.
Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Russia had suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties during the war. Moscow dismissed the report as unreliable.
PRESSURE BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Despite pressure by the Trump administration on both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise, the two sides have so far failed to agree on a ceasefire and fighting continues to rage along the roughly 1,200-km (750-mile) frontline.
Russia’s troops launched major air strikes on Ukraine overnight on Tuesday, ahead of the talks, and followed up with smaller drone attacks on Wednesday and Thursday.
Zelenskiy, who has repeatedly pleaded for air-defence missiles to defend Ukraine’s skies, said on Thursday that Kyiv was ready to swap its drones, in which it has become a global leader, for air-defence missiles from allies or for Poland’s Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets.
The Ukrainian General Staff, meanwhile, said in a statement its forces had carried out a series of “successful” strikes on a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile launch site last month.
The fate of the eastern Donetsk region, where the most intense battles are taking place, remains one of the most complicated issues in the talks.
Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops from the entire region, including a line of heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences.
Ukraine has said the conflict should be frozen along the current frontlines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces. Kyiv says it wants control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, which is in Russian-controlled territory.
The head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Thursday that Moscow was ready for international cooperation over the Zaporizhzhia plant, including with the United States, but the facility must be Russian.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion. Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5% of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Sharon Singleton)
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