“After today’s meetings (Thursday), preparations for the next trilateral meeting are already more advanced. Most likely, the next meeting will be in the Emirates, specifically in Abu Dhabi,” Zelensky said in his daily address to the nation.
“We hope this meeting will take place in early March,” he added.
Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov confirmed a bilateral meeting with the head of the US delegation, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. According to Umerov, in addition to discussing Ukraine’s post-war economic aspects, Kyiv and Washington would also “discuss preparations for the next round of negotiations,” he wrote on the social media platform X, adding: “It is necessary to synchronize our positions before this stage.”
In mid-February, Geneva had already hosted a round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives under US mediation, which produced no results other than another prisoner exchange.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said today that Russia “has no deadline” to end the conflict in Ukraine, which began with the invasion of the neighboring country on February 24, 2022.
“Have you heard us say anything about deadlines? (…) We have no deadlines, only objectives (…). At present, we are pursuing them,” Lavrov said, quoted by Russia’s state news agency TASS.
Today’s meeting in Switzerland was preceded by another night of Russian attacks on Ukraine.
