Ukraine, Russia agree to major prisoner swap following second day of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi

Ukraine and Russia ‍have concluded a second day of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi and agreed to a major prisoner swap, the first such exchange in five months, officials say.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the delegations from the United States, Ukraine and Russia had agreed to exchange 314 prisoners of war.

“While significant work remains, steps like this demonstrate that sustained ⁠diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine,” Mr Witkoff said in a post on X, describing the peace talks as “detailed and productive”.

Ukraine-Russia peace ‍talks backed by the US will continue ⁠in the near future, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on ‌Thursday after the negotiations had wrapped up.

Ukraine’s negotiating team raised the issue ‌of further swaps of prisoners of war with the ‍Russian delegation, he added.

Both Russia and Ukraine have also said that the talks had been positive so far.

A Ukrainian official said the talks have now finished.

Late on Wednesday, Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov hailed the first day of discussions as “meaningful and productive, focusing on concrete steps and practical solutions”.

On Thursday, Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said there was progress and a positive movement forward.

He also said that active work was ongoing to restore Russia’s ‌relations with the United States, including within the framework of a US-Russia working group on the economy.

“The warmongers from Europe, from Britain, are constantly trying to interfere with this process, constantly trying ‍to meddle in it. And the more such attempts there are, the more we see that progress is definitely being made,” Mr Dmitriev said.

Russia has accused Ukraine’s European allies of prolonging the war with their support for Ukraine.

Russia’s state news agency RIA later reported that Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 157 prisoners of war each, citing the defence ministry.

Three civilians from the Kursk region were also returned to Russia.

The agreement on the prisoner exchange comes after a long pause.

The last exchange happened in October 2025.

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

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

Mr Zelensky said this week that about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield.

But he gave no details on the number of wounded or missing Ukrainian servicemen.

US-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Russia had suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties during the war.

Russian authorities have dismissed the report as unreliable.

The fate of the eastern Donetsk region is one of the most complicated issues in the talks.

As a precondition for any deal, Russia wants Ukraine to pull its troops from all of the Donetsk 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.

Ukraine says it wants control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, which is in Russian-controlled territory.

Russia is ready for international co-operation over the Zaporizhzhia plant, including with the US, but the facility must be Russian, the head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Thursday.

Russia occupies about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory, including ‍Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

Analysts say Russian forces have gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.