Ukraine, Russia agree on prisoner swap as second round of peace talks ends

KYIV - Ukraine and Russia concluded a second round of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday aimed at ending Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two, with the two sides conducting a major prisoner swap and agreeing to resume negotiations soon. US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said the delegations from the US, Ukraine, and Russia had agreed to an exchange of 314 prisoners of war, which took place on Thursday. It was the first such swap in five months.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said some of the released POWs had been held for nearly four years. He said the next round of talks would be held soon, likely in the United States.

Witkoff, writing on the X social media platform, said: "The discussions were constructive and focused on how to create the conditions for a durable peace."

He said the talks "demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine."

Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Ukraine favored any diplomatic format "that can realistically bring peace closer and make it reliable, lasting, and such that deprives Russia of the appetite to continue fighting."

Speaking earlier alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Zelenskiy said the talks covered the main differences between the two sides.

RUSSIA SEES PROGRESS AND POSITIVE MOVEMENT

Zelenskiy said he was keen for the talks to lead to the end of the four-year war, but repeated his insistence that Ukraine must receive robust security guarantees, including from Washington, to ensure Russia does not attack again. 

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who took part in earlier talks with Russian officials and Witkoff, said the imposition of further sanctions on Russia would depend on how the talks proceeded. 

Bessent maintained his belief that Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine was illegal and continued to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin was a war criminal. 

Russia's envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said there was progress and positive movement. He also said work was under way to restore Russia's relations with the United States, including within a US-Russia working group on the economy.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 157 prisoners of war each, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Three civilians from the Kursk region were also returned to Russia.

A video released by Ukraine's presidency showed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war—many wrapped in the national flag—disembarking from buses in the snow, some hugging each other and others crying as they spoke to relatives on mobile phones.

POW exchanges were the only concrete steps towards peace that emerged from the previous rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia last year in Turkey.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed, wounded, or gone missing in nearly four years of war.

Zelenskiy said this week that about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield, but gave no details on the number of wounded or missing Ukrainian servicemen.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said Russia had suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties. Moscow dismissed the report as unreliable.

PRESSURE BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Despite pressure by the Trump administration on Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise, fighting continues to rage along the roughly 1,200-km (750-mile) front line. Russia's troops launched major airstrikes on Ukraine overnight on Tuesday, ahead of the talks, and followed up with smaller drone attacks on Wednesday and Thursday.

In his address, Zelenskiy noted "good results" from the Security Service of Ukraine, singling out an attack by Ukrainian-made long-range Flamingo missiles on the testing ground for Russia's Oreshnik hypersonic missiles near the Caspian Sea. After his talks with Tusk, Zelenskiy repeated his pleas for air-defence missiles and said Kyiv was ready to swap its drones, in which it has become a global leader, for the missiles from allies or for Poland's Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. The Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement its forces had launched successful strikes on a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile launch site last month.

The fate of the eastern Donetsk region, where the most intense battles are taking place, remains one of the most complicated issues in the talks.

Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops from the entire 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. The head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Thursday that Moscow was ready for international cooperation over the Zaporizhzhia plant, including with the United States, but the facility must be Russian.

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.