Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the largest prisoner exchange since the start of Russia’s war of aggression, following his meeting with US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Dublin. “As Steve and Jared told me, this will be the largest prisoner exchange,” Zelensky said on Thursday evening in a brief statement reported by the news agency Ukrinform. “Our people, our soldiers, will come home.”
The meeting took place on Thursday evening, 12 November, at Baldonnel military airport west of the Irish capital, as the news outlet Liga.net reports, citing Reuters photos and Radio Svoboda video footage. According to the report, the head of the foreign intelligence service and leader of the Ukrainian negotiating delegation, Rustem Umerov, was also present. Witkoff and Kushner had previously spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
A breakthrough, but not peace
The exchange was the only tangible result of the talks. How many prisoners will be released and when remained open. Kushner said, according to the British broadcaster BBC, that the exchange would “bring thousands of people back to their families”. Already on Wednesday, 11 November, Zelensky had mentioned in Dublin a format of “1000 to 1000”, “maybe 1200 will come out of it”, as the news outlet NV reports. According to NV, 1500 to 1500 had also been discussed in Abu Dhabi.
The two-day negotiations in the Emirati capital – the first direct talks between the warring parties under US mediation in more than eight months, as the Tages-Anzeiger writes – ended on Wednesday, 11 November, without a breakthrough on the core issues. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, the Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia called the talks very “hard”; the Russian delegation had arrived with “strict directives”.
Europe is to get a voice
Zelensky counted the announced participation of the Europeans as a second success. “It is important that Europe is directly represented in the negotiating delegation at the next meeting. The Europeans will have a voice at the negotiating table and will not participate separately,” he said, according to Ukrinform. “This is important to us because the war is in Europe.”
Kushner said at the press conference that an agreement without European participation was not possible; they and Witkoff had made this clear to Putin in the Kremlin the same day, Liga.net reports. The Russian president was “ready to try it”. The Kremlin did not sound quite so unequivocal: according to the Tages-Anzeiger, Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov was reserved. The Europeans were trying “to take part in the negotiations in every possible way, but as our president said, they must clarify whether they want peace or a continuation of the war”.
The Tages-Anzeiger classifies the talks in Abu Dhabi as negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday. According to Liga.net, the Europeans were present in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November but did not meet with the Russian representatives.
What was on the table in Moscow
Putin remained intransigent on the territorial question. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, he described Russia’s state borders as the benchmark for a solution and demanded a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk region as a precondition for a comprehensive ceasefire. He also proposed a time-limited truce for the contested city of Kostiantynivka in order to bring hundreds of people to safety there – as most recently in Oleshky in the Kherson region. Russia needed five days to demine the area, he said at the start of the meeting. Zelensky’s communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn indicated, according to Liga.net, that the occupiers also wanted to use this truce to their advantage.
In Dublin, meanwhile, around 40 European states signed a declaration on common security initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron, as tagesschau.de reports. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said there: “Ukraine must be at the table, the Europeans must be at the table, the Americans and of course Russia must be at the table.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte saw the US, Europe and Ukraine “completely on the same line”.
For Ukraine, besides the prisoner exchange, the main issues are money and weapons for the winter. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a further 500 generators and 200 buses at the summit and spoke of the 22nd sanctions package against Russia. Merz pressed for closing the financing gap for 2027 and called the negotiations on a new 45 billion euros for the coming year “difficult”.
Zelensky himself reported another burden on Thursday: the military satellite internet Starshield had for several days again been working only at reduced speed, he wrote in social networks, according to the Tages-Anzeiger. The restriction for objects flying faster than 161 kilometres per hour made it harder to defend against Russian jet drones. The service had already been throttled for several days in mid-October.
How things will continue is open. Zelensky said, according to Ukrinform, that work on organising the next meeting of all negotiators was already under way. According to Liga.net, Arakhamia spoke of a “very good opportunity” to find a solution by the turn of the year. The Tages-Anzeiger also points to Kremlin statements that Putin wants to continue the talks with US President Donald Trump at an APEC summit in China at the end of the month.
