Russia and Ukraine agree to large prisoner exchange in Abu Dhabi

Russia and Ukraine agreed Wednesday to a large prisoner exchange after two days of U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi, but reported no breakthrough toward ending their nearly five-year war.

Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, said the sides would finalize the number of prisoners on Thursday. “One of the positives is we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners,” he said. Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, and the head of Kyiv’s delegation, Rustem Umerov, confirmed the planned exchange.

Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported that the swap should take place in two to three weeks, according to Al Jazeera. No final figure was announced. Medinsky said the sides had also reached a mutual understanding on some issues and would hold further talks soon.

The meeting was the first between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations since February. The two countries have continued to exchange prisoners during the war. Al Jazeera reported that each freed 200 prisoners of war in March after talks in Geneva in February. They exchanged 146 each last year following mediation by the United Arab Emirates, and larger exchanges followed three rounds of talks in Istanbul from May to July.

Dmitry Medvedenko, a political analyst interviewed by Al Jazeera, said a swap would have to exceed last May’s exchange of 1,000 prisoners on each side to be the biggest. Prisoner exchanges, he said, have taken place every two or three months without talks at this level.

The negotiations also addressed the return of Ukrainian civilians held in captivity and children taken from Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He called Tuesday’s session “constructive and quite substantive” and said the sides discussed security guarantees. Kushner said they had made progress on a postwar security framework, but that territorial questions would be the hardest to resolve. He described the meeting as “very tough” but productive. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also called it “very productive,” while cautioning that an agreement to stop the war would take time.

Kushner said he and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff would travel to Moscow on Thursday to meet President Vladimir Putin, then fly to Dublin to meet Zelenskyy. There, they would “explore some of the ideas we came up with,” Kushner said, according to Al Jazeera.

Europe’s role in future talks remains unsettled. NPR reported that representatives of European governments, the European Union and NATO were in Abu Dhabi consulting with Ukraine’s delegation, though Moscow did not want European countries involved in direct negotiations. Medinsky said Moscow was not opposed to EU participation, according to Al Jazeera, but questioned what the two sides would discuss without European proposals. Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia called for the next talks to include Europe, while Zelenskyy said European security could not be considered “without Europe.”

Fighting continued during the negotiations. Overnight Russian strikes wounded seven civilians in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region and the city of Kharkiv, NPR reported. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 627 Ukrainian drones overnight. The governor of the region around St. Petersburg said drones set a fire at the oil-export port of Ust-Luga, injuring three workers.