A second round of talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials on a US-drafted plan to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine will begin on Wednesday rather than Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Zelensky did not give a reason for the delay.
The announcement came a day after one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senior envoys held unexpected talks with US officials in Florida without the participation of Kyiv.
“The dates for the next trilateral meetings have been set — 4 and 5 February in Abu Dhabi,” Zelensky said in a post on X.
Neither the Kremlin nor the United States has confirmed the revised dates.
Washington says it is “very close” to brokering a deal to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War, but negotiations remain stalled over the key issue of territory in any post-war settlement.
Russia has continued to attack Ukraine throughout the negotiating process.
Late on Sunday, a Russian drone strike on a bus carrying mine workers in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region killed at least 12 people, according to officials.
Zelensky described the attack as a “crime” in his evening address.
Talks deadlocked
The United States has sought to craft a peace settlement through separate and joint talks with both sides.
However, Kyiv says the most critical issue — territorial control — remains unresolved, despite agreement on most other points.
The first round of trilateral talks on the US plan, held in Abu Dhabi on Friday and Saturday, failed to produce a breakthrough.
Russia, which occupies around 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory, is demanding full control of the eastern Donetsk region as part of any agreement and has threatened to seize it by force if negotiations collapse.
Ukraine has warned that surrendering territory would embolden Moscow and has said it will not sign any deal that fails to deter future Russian aggression.
Many Ukrainians view the prospect of giving up land defended by their soldiers for years as unacceptable.
Maternity hospital hit
Ukraine has accused Russia of acting in bad faith during the peace process, pointing to continued attacks across the country.
On Sunday, a Russian drone strike on a bus carrying mine workers in Dnipropetrovsk killed at least 12 people, just hours after another drone attack in the same region killed a man and a woman, officials said.
Earlier, a Russian drone hit a maternity hospital in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, injuring seven people, including two women undergoing medical examinations, according to the regional governor and emergency services.
The attacks occurred on the day the Kremlin said a week-long reduction in strikes announced by US President Donald Trump would come to an end — though Ukraine says Russia continued its assaults regardless.
Trump said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv and “various towns” during cold weather, an arrangement the Kremlin said would last until Sunday. The precise terms of the agreement remain unclear, and Moscow did not link the pause in attacks to weather conditions.
Ukraine’s defence minister on Sunday thanked Elon Musk after the US entrepreneur said efforts to prevent Russia from using Starlink satellite services for drone attacks appeared to have succeeded.
“The first steps are already delivering real results… Thank you for standing with us. You are a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people,” Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” aimed at preventing NATO’s expansion—a justification Kyiv and its allies have dismissed as a pretext for an illegal land grab.
The war has devastated vast areas of the country, reduced entire cities to rubble, and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.
