Sawt Falasteen - Ukraine says Abu Dhabi talks with Russia 'substantive and productive'

While there was no apparent breakthrough in the most recent round of discussions, the negotiations were set to carry on into a second day, Kyiv said.

The US-mediated talks are the latest 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 the eastern and southern part of the country decimated.

The talks were going on Wednesday as stepped-up Russian strikes on Ukraine's power infrastructure left Kyiv residents in darkness and cold, with temperatures dropping as low as -20C.

But though the massive barrage threatened to overshadow progress, Ukraine's top negotiator Rustem Umerov said the talks the first day were "substantive and productive, focused on concrete steps and practical solutions".

As talks got underway, the Kremlin repeated its hardline demand that Kyiv give in if it wanted the four-year invasion to end.

"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.

- Land -

In Ukraine, foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said Kyiv was "interested in finding out what the Russians and Americans really want."

The content of the talks was on "military and military-political issues," he added, without elaborating.

The main sticking point in settling 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.

Trump despatched his ubiquitous envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to try to corral the sides to an agreement.

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.

Europe fears it has been sidelined in the process, even as France and Britain lead efforts to put together a peacekeeping force that could be deployed to Ukraine after any deal.

It was "strategically important for Europe to at some point be part of the negotiations," the EU's ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Mathernova told AFP on Wednesday in Kyiv.

Russia occupies around 20 percent of Ukraine, but Kyiv still controls around one-fifth of the Donetsk region.

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.

Russian shelling of a market square in the frontline town of Druzhkivka killed seven on Wednesday, Ukrainian regional authorities said.

Following the first round of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi last month, Ukrainians were sceptical that a 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."

On the streets of Moscow, some were more hopeful.

"Everyone hopes, everyone is very optimistic about these negotiations," says Larisa, a retiree who said she had family in Ukraine and relatives fighting at the front.

"It has to end one day, everyone's had enough," said Anton, a 43-year-old engineer.

F.Qawasmeh--SF-PST