Representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the US will meet today in Abu Dhabi to push forward a peace deal, the first time Moscow and Kyiv have spoken formally since April 2022. The surprise announcement of the tripartite talks came after a flurry of shuttle diplomacy, with White House envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner meeting with Putin in the Kremlin while Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelensky rushed at short notice to Davos for a face-to-face meeting with Trump himself. 

The Kremlin has good grounds for believing that the humanitarian crisis triggered by its bombing campaign will eventually spill over into a full-blown political crisis for Zelensky

Before the talks began Witkoff told reporters that just ‘one thing’ remained unresolved on the path to a ceasefire deal, widely assumed to be a reference to Putin’s continued demands that Ukraine withdraw from the 20 per cent of the Donetsk region still under Kyiv’s control. Zelensky also told delegates at the World Economic Forum that the future status of land currently occupied by Russia was unresolved but peace proposals were ‘nearly ready.’

Will this weekend’s talks in Abu Dhabi bring peace to Ukraine? While it’s unlikely that a final deal will be struck immediately, the optimistic reading is that the distance between the two sides will narrow and the latest round of talks will lay the foundations of a ceasefire by summer. The pessimistic view is that Russia believes that it is winning the war both on the ground and through its devastatingly effective campaign of destroying Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure, so will try to stall a resolution to the talks for as long as possible. 

The Kremlin has good grounds for believing that the humanitarian crisis triggered by its bombing campaign will eventually spill over into a full-blown political crisis for Zelensky – who also faces a deepening corruption scandal as another senior member of his administration was arrested on war profiteering charges. Lack of light and heat in the hardest winter in a decade has, according to Kyiv mayor Vitaly........

© The Spectator