Half of Donbas on paper, a prisoner swap in the notes: Abu Dhabi, day two

The second day of talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi is due to begin at 09:00 CET, RaiNews reports, citing Tass². Overnight, the first day was reread by each side in its own light. The useful parts are the small, checkable ones.

The map. President Zelenskyy said Russia had claimed at the table that it occupied half of Donbas. “This is the problem. Putin lives in a different reality,” he wrote, adding that “the American side confirmed the Ukrainian assessment of what is happening on the battlefield”¹. That is one side’s account of what another side said. It is still worth noting: talks only work when people at least agree on the facts.

The list. Ukrainska Pravda, citing a source close to Kyiv’s delegation, reports that the parties agreed on a “large-scale” prisoner exchange “in the near future”². No date or number has been published, and neither Moscow nor Washington has confirmed it in the reports we checked. Zelenskyy called the session “constructive and fairly substantive” and said the release of prisoners is a priority².

The truce on offer. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine had handed partners its own proposal for a ceasefire covering the energy sector and the Black Sea and was waiting for a Russian reply². He also told Reuters he had asked Marco Rubio to speed up interceptor deliveries¹. On Tuesday, Sergei Lavrov said Russia would not accept “another truce or another ceasefire” without knowing what follows².

The architecture. Zelenskyy said the agenda included a new security architecture for Europe, but that “nobody saw the documents” the Americans discussed with the Russians¹. He asked Europe to name its own negotiator “this month, not later”².

For you: ignore the adjectives and look at the inventory. Partial truces, prisoner swaps and a named European envoy are things a ministry can sign, log and check. If day two moves any of them from a source’s notes into an official statement, that is progress, however unexciting it sounds.