Date, Location of Next Round of US, Ukraine, Russia Peace Talks Could Change, Zelenskyy Says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Jan. 30 that the date or location of the next round of trilateral talks between Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington could change.

The follow-up talks are set to take place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Feb. 1, but Zelenskyy indicated he was unsure of when the next meeting would go ahead.

“The date or the location may change—because, in our view, something is happening in the situation between the United States and Iran. And those developments could likely affect the timing,” he said, without going into details.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, did not rule out that a new round of talks could last more than one day.

“Maybe two days if necessary, yes,” Peskov said on Jan. 29 when asked whether the talks could last longer than one day, Russian state news agency TASS reported. He didn’t specify a start time.

On Jan. 30, the Kremlin also confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt strikes on Kyiv until Feb. 1.

“Indeed, President Trump made a personal request to President Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week, until Feb. 1, in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations,” Peskov said.

However, he didn’t explicitly say Putin had agreed to the request from the White House.

Trump, however, said on Jan. 29 that Putin had agreed to pause attacks on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and other cities for one week due to extreme cold weather.

“And I have to tell you, it was very nice. A lot of people said, ‘Don’t waste a call, you’re not going to get that.’ And he did it, and we’re very happy that they did it,” Trump said.

On the American side, optimism remains that a deal to bring the war to a close could be reached soon.

U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Matthew Whitaker said he believes Moscow and Kyiv could find a compromise on the territorial issue of the Ukrainian conflict soon.

“[U.S. special envoy] Steve Witkoff has said publicly that it’s really down to one issue, and that is territory,” Whitaker told Newsmax.

“And I think we’re going to find out in the coming weeks and days whether or not the parties can come to an agreement on the territory.”

Russia has demanded that Kyiv surrender the entire eastern industrial region of the Donbas, but Zelenskyy has refused to yield to Moscow’s demands.

Whitaker also drew attention to the loss of life on the battlefield, saying that “Russia continues to lose 1,000 soldiers a day. It’s staggering that, you know, I saw publicly available reporting that said the casualties on both sides, since the war started, as 2 million human beings.”

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has publicly revealed the casualty numbers they have suffered, but a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S.-based think tank, published on Jan. 27, estimates that combined Russian and Ukrainian military casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) from February 2022 through December 2025 may total as many as 1.8 million.

It also projects that the figure could reach 2 million by spring 2026 if current attrition rates continue.

The report breaks this down as approximately 1.2 million Russian casualties (including up to 325,000 killed) and 500,000–600,000 Ukrainian casualties (including 100,000–140,000 killed).

The Epoch Times has not been able to independently verify these figures.

Reuters contributed to this report.