Putin accepts a three-way meeting with Ukraine and the US but insists that the key to peace is to hand over the Donbas

The meeting between the Russian autocrat and Steve Witkoff y Jared KushnerTrump’s son-in-law, went on for 3 hours and 40 minutes, well into the early hours of the morning. As in the previous six meetings, Putin remained immovable in his demands. Your advisor Yuri Ushakov He defined the conversations as “substantive, constructive and very frank.”

Putin agreed to send an official delegation to Abu Dhabi led by a high-ranking military officer, Admiral Igor Kostiukov, head of Military Intelligence, who will fly to the Emirati capital in the next few hours. But the Kremlin warned that no significant progress has been made to resolve a war that is about to enter its fifth year.

“The most important thing is that during these conversations between our president and the Americans it was reiterated that without resolving the territorial issue according to the formula agreed in Anchoragethere is no hope of achieving a long-term agreement,” Ushakov stressed, referring to the summit between Trump and Putin last August in Alaska.

“The Americans, it must be recognized, have done a lot to prepare and they trust that the meeting will be successful“explained the Kremlin’s advisor on international politics, adding that Washington hopes that these latest diplomatic contacts will pave the way to advance “a peaceful settlement agreement.”

Meanwhile, the Russian Army will continue to press along the entire front, frozen in recent weeks by snow, and bombard Ukrainian cities. The country is suffering one of its harshest winters with sub-zero temperatures and hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and heating due to attacks by Russian missiles and drones against energy infrastructure.

Zelensky, who met with Trump on Thursday in Davos, was convinced that the central point of the trilateral meeting will be the division of Donbas, where the Ukrainians still control more than a fifth of the Donetsk region. His negotiating team will be headed by the head of the presidential office, Kirilo Budánov.

“We all talk about a question, which is the most difficult and is not yet resolved. I think that in trilateral meetings it is possible for the parties to present their proposals to each other. “Everything revolves around the territory,” said the president in a press conference held after his speech at the Economic Forum in the Swiss city.

The Republican president, for his part, also assured in Davos that if the leaders of Ukraine and Russia do not make concessions and accept his peace plan they will be “stupid.”

Frozen Russian assets

Furthermore, Putin tried to gain Trump’s support by also addressing with his emissaries the issue of Greenland and the Peace Board, issues in which the Russian position diametrically disagrees with the European and Ukrainian ones.

Zelensky rejected the proposal after inviting Putin, while Europeans have seriously questioned the repercussions of such a structure for international law and the UN. Regarding the Arctic island, kyiv and its allies have aligned themselves with Denmark.

In fact, Putin insisted on his willingness to transfer to that structure $1 billion in Russian assets frozen in US territory for the war. This issue was already addressed by the head of the Kremlin on Thursday in Moscow with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

He also suggested to Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, that the rest of the Russian assets in the US – which amount to about $5 billion – be used as reparation for the reconstruction of Ukrainian territories devastated by the military actions of the last four years. Of course, “after the signing of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.”

It is the first time that Moscow has shown itself willing to offer reparations to kyiv, although this figure seems totally insufficient, since the vast majority of frozen Russian assets – more than $234 billion – are located in Europe.