Overview
- Russia confirmed it is attending the 23–24 January meetings, with its delegation led by military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov, while Ukraine’s team is headed by national security chief Rustem Umerov with senior military and intelligence officials.
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that Moscow conditions progress on Ukraine withdrawing forces from parts of Donbas, echoing aide Yuri Ushakov’s reference to an earlier “Anchorage formula.”
- The Office of the Ukrainian President said no official start time was set and described initial discussions in Abu Dhabi as informal technical contacts among teams already on site.
- Fighting remains intense, with Ukraine’s General Staff reporting 222 clashes on 22 January, including 92 Russian assaults on the Pokrovsk axis and 37 on the Huliaipole sector.
- Russia’s overnight strikes damaged energy infrastructure, leaving customers without power in Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, as rescuers in Kryvyi Rih brought 90 miners to the surface after outages trapped them underground.