Russia and Ukraine agreed to carry out a major prisoner exchange following two days of talks in Abu Dhabi held on November 10–11 with U.S. mediation. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation and a presidential aide, told journalists that details of the exchange would be announced soon. White House special envoy Jared Kushner also confirmed the agreement.
The final session on Wednesday lasted just under two hours. It produced no signs of a breakthrough on a peace settlement, although expectations had already been restrained ahead of the meeting.
“We reached understanding on some issues, but not on others”
Medinsky said the central topic of the meeting was postwar security guarantees for Ukraine and Europe as a whole. “On some issues we reached understanding, and on others we did not,” he said without providing details. Medinsky also indicated that Moscow was not abandoning its territorial demands and did not consider European representatives full participants in the process while their military support for Kyiv continued.
Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov described the talks as “exceptionally substantive, constructive, extremely candid and confidential.” He said the format of a possible meeting with European representatives would be discussed in light of the Abu Dhabi talks’ results.
The next stage is Moscow
Kushner said he would fly to Moscow on Thursday with special envoy Steve Witkoff to brief Vladimir Putin in person on the progress of the talks, and would then meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ireland. Russian media reported that Putin had already discussed the results of the meeting and the planned prisoner exchange at the CSTO summit in Moscow.
Photo: Anadolu (Yuri Ushakov), Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
