Ukraine and Russia wrapped up a second day of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday, agreeing to a major prisoner swap – their first in five months – as part of efforts to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, officials said.
U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the delegations from the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia had agreed to exchange 314 prisoners of war.
"While significant work remains, steps like this demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine," Witkoff said in a post on X, describing the peace talks as "detailed and productive."
Both Russia and Ukraine have also said that the talks have been positive so far. A Ukrainian official said the talks have now finished.
Late on Wednesday, Ukraine's top negotiator Rustem Umerov hailed the first day of discussions as "meaningful and productive, focusing on concrete steps and practical solutions."
On Thursday, Russia's envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said there was progress and a positive movement forward. He also said that active work was underway to restore Russia's relations with the United States, including within the framework of a U.S.-Russia working group on the economy.
"The warmongers from Europe, from Britain, are constantly trying to interfere with this process, constantly trying to meddle in it. And the more such attempts there are, the more we see that progress is definitely being made," Dmitriev said.
Russia has accused Ukraine's European allies, including Britain, of prolonging the war with their support for Kyiv.
Russia's state news agency, RIA, later reported that Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 157 prisoners of war each, citing the Defense Ministry. Three civilians from the Kursk region were also returned to Russia.
The agreement on the prisoner exchange comes after a long pause.
The last exchange happened in October 2025. The POW exchanges were the only concrete steps towards peace that emerged from the previous rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia that took place last year in Türkiye.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed, wounded, or gone missing during nearly four years of war.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield. But he gave no details on the number of wounded or missing Ukrainian servicemen.
Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Russia had suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties during the war. Moscow dismissed the report as unreliable.
Despite pressure by the Trump administration on both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise, the two sides have so far failed to agree on a cease-fire.
Russia's troops launched major airstrikes on Ukraine overnight Tuesday, ahead of the talks, and followed up with smaller drone attacks on Wednesday and Thursday.
Zelenskyy said that Thursday, the Russian troops had deployed 183 attack drones against Ukraine, about 110 of which were Shaheds.
The Ukrainian General Staff, meanwhile, said in a statement that its forces had carried out a series of "successful" strikes on a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile launch site last month.
The fighting also raged on along about 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) of the front line, with the fiercest battles in the eastern Donetsk region.
The fate of the eastern Donetsk region is one of the most complicated issues in the talks.
As a precondition for any deal, Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops from all of the Donetsk region, including a line of heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine's strongest defences.
Ukraine has said the conflict should be frozen along the current front lines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces. Kyiv says it wants control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, which is in Russian-controlled territory.
Russia is ready for international cooperation over the Zaporizhzhia plant, including with the United States, but the facility must be Russian, the head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom said Thursday.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine's national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion. Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5% of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.
