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Russia demands Ukraine give in as UAE talks open
Moscow on Wednesday demanded Kyiv accept its conditions to end the four-year-war and vowed to press on with its invasion otherwise, as negotiations between the two sides opened in Abu Dhabi.
The US-mediated talks are the latest round of negotiations in a flurry of diplomacy that has so far failed to strike a deal to halt the war, unleashed by Russia's February 2022 invasion.
The war has spiralled into Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II, with hundreds of thousands killed, millions forced to flee their homes in Ukraine and much of eastern and southern Ukraine decimated.
The Kremlin's hardline rhetoric -- along with a massive Russian drone and missile barrage in the run-up to the talks, pounding Ukraine's energy grid and knocking out power and heating in temperatures far below freezing -- threatened to overshadow any chances of progress in the Emirati capital.
"Our position is well known," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday as the talks got underway.
"Until the Kyiv regime makes the appropriate decisions, the special military operation continues," he said, using Russia's term for the offensive.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had on Tuesday said that Russia's strikes on Kyiv's energy system "confirms that attitudes in Moscow have not changed: they continue to bet on war and the destruction of Ukraine, and they do not take diplomacy seriously."
"The work of our negotiating team will be adjusted accordingly," he said, without elaborating.
US President Donald Trump, however, said Russian President Vladimir Putin had "kept his word" with a week-long promise not to hit the capital or critical energy facilities.
"It's a lot, you know, one week, we'll take anything, because it's really, really cold over there," Trump said Tuesday.
"I want him to end the war," Trump added of Putin. Asked if he was disappointed Putin had not extended the pause, he replied: "I would like him to."
- Land -
The main sticking point in the talks to settle the conflict is the long-term fate of territory in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow is demanding that Kyiv pull its troops out of swathes of the Donbas, including heavily fortified cities atop vast natural resources, as a precondition of any deal.
It also wants international recognition that land seized in the invasion belongs to Russia.
Kyiv has said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected a unilateral pull-back of forces.
Ukraine's top negotiator Rustem Umerov confirmed the talks had started Wednesday in a trilateral format.
Trump has despatched his ubiquitous envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to try to corral the sides to an agreement.
Ukraine's Umerov is seen a shrewd negotiator, hailed by colleagues as a worker of diplomatic "wonders".
Russia's top negotiator is military intelligence director Igor Kostyukov, a career naval officer sanctioned in the West over his role in the Ukraine invasion.
Russia occupies around 20 percent of Ukraine, but Kyiv still controls around one-fifth of the Donetsk region.
At the current pace of Russia's advance, it would take Moscow's army another 18 months to conquer it, according to AFP analysis -- but the areas remaining under Ukrainian control include heavily fortified urban hubs.
Ukraine has warned that ceding ground will embolden Moscow and that it will not sign a deal that fails to deter Russia from invading again.
Russia also claims the Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as its own, and holds pockets of territory in at least three other Ukrainian regions in the east.
- 'Prepare for the worst' -
On the battlefield, Russia has been notching up gains at immense human cost, hoping it can outlast and outgun Kyiv's stretched army.
On Tuesday, Russian strikes on the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia killed three -- including two teenagers -- and wounded at least 12 people, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
A Russian drone strike also killed two men overnight in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, Mykola Lukashuk, head of the regional administration, said on the messaging platform.
Following the first round of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi last month, Ukrainians were doubtful any deal could be struck with Moscow.
"I think it's all just a show for the public," Petro, a Kyiv resident, told AFP.
"We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best."
M.Hill--SFF
