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Senior Ukrainian and Russian officials are due to meet in Abu Dhabi for a second round of talks brokered by the Trump administration.
The two-day talks are expected to mirror last month’s format, with negotiators from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow in attendance.
Donald Trump has struck an upbeat tone in recent weeks, saying that an end to the four-year war is within reach. However, Moscow and Kyiv have tempered expectations, playing down the prospects of an immediate breakthrough.
Russia resumed bombing Kyiv, just five days after Donald Trump claimed Vladimir Putin had agreed to a week-long pause in strikes because of extreme cold in Ukraine.
How close are the sides to a peace deal?
A viable path to peace remains complicated, with Moscow continuing to press maximalist territorial demands on Ukraine.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said last week that negotiations were hinging on a single, highly contentious issue: land. The Kremlin has repeatedly stated that any peace deal must have Ukraine cede the entire eastern Donbas region, including areas still under Ukrainian control.
Kyiv has rejected those terms, though Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is willing to consider alternative arrangements, including the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from parts of the east and the establishment of a demilitarised zone.
US officials have been pressuring Ukraine to give up Donbas, promising security guarantees only if Kyiv first agrees to territorial concessions.
Even if some compromise were reached on territory, other obstacles would remain. Moscow has said it would not tolerate European troops on Ukrainian soil, which Kyiv sees as essential for security guarantees. The Kremlin has also demanded strict limits on the size of Ukraine’s military, a condition Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out.
Despite the wide gap between their positions, both sides have often engaged in a careful dance in front of Trump, seeking to appear open to peace so as not to anger the US president, while placing the blame on the other side.
Who is taking part in the talks?
Ukraine and Russia are sending high-level delegations. Ukraine’s team includes Kyrylo Budanov, the former head of military intelligence who now serves as the head of the presidential administration, David Arakhamia, a trusted negotiator, and Andrii Hnatov, the chief of the general staff. The Russian delegation is led by Igor Kostyukov, the head of the GRU military intelligence service, alongside other intelligence officials and the Kremlin special envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
The image of Budanov and Kostyukov facing each other is striking: as former and current intelligence chiefs, both have overseen covert campaigns against their rival services, with Ukraine having eliminated several senior GRU figures during the war.
From the US side, the special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to attend. The two men have become fixtures in US diplomacy, shuttling between the Middle East, the Iran crisis and the war in Ukraine, but have been criticised for their lack of formal diplomatic experience.
It remains unclear when Putin and Zelenskyy might meet. Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he is ready to meet Putin on neutral ground. The Kremlin, however, has said the Russian leader would only agree to talks if Zelenskyy travelled to Moscow.
What do most Ukrainians and Russians want?
Battered by a historically cold winter and facing gruelling months ahead, with much of its civilian infrastructure damaged by Russian strikes, Ukrainians are showing clear signs of exhaustion. While the desire for peace is widespread, polling indicates firm resistance to any settlement that would see the entire Donbas region handed over to Russia in exchange for US and European security guarantees and an end to the war. Many in the country fear such a compromise would not bring lasting peace, but instead embolden Moscow to press its campaign further.
It is harder to gauge public sentiment in Russia, where any criticism of the war can result in a prison sentence. However, the few independent polls that still exist suggest that the share of Russians who favour peace talks has risen to 61%. At the same time, those surveys indicate that Russians, much like their leader, remain unwilling to make territorial concessions as part of a peace settlement.
What if talks fail again?
Putin has argued that Russia is winning the war and has indicated he is prepared to continue fighting unless Ukraine agrees to the terms set out by Moscow.
In a war of attrition that has produced close to 2 million casualties, the central question is: which side will buckle first, or, put another way, which has the greater stamina to sustain the conflict?
Ukraine, with a far smaller population than Russia, is struggling to mobilise enough troops to fill the gaps, while doubts persist over whether Europe’s military-industrial capacity can scale up quickly enough to compensate for the reduction in US military aid.
Russia, meanwhile, is under mounting strain of its own. The economy is stagnating, many non-military sectors are shrinking and oil revenues have fallen sharply as sanctions bite.
Until one side reaches a breaking point and is forced to give in, the war is likely to continue.
