KYIV, Ukraine — Negotiators from Moscow and Kyiv on Thursday held a second day of U.S.-brokered talks on ending their war, as Russia escalated its attacks on Ukraine's power grid and the two sides continued their grinding war of attrition.
Russia has hammered Ukraine's electricity network, aiming to deny civilians power and weaken their appetite for the fight, while fighting continues along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line snaking along eastern and southern parts of Ukraine.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that 55,000 Ukrainian troops have died since Russia's invasion almost four years ago. ''And there is a large number of people whom Ukraine considers missing,'' he added in an interview broadcast by French TV channel France 2 late Wednesday.
The last time Zelenskyy gave a figure for battlefield deaths, in early 2025, he said 46,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.
The delegations from Moscow and Kyiv were joined Thursday in the capital of the United Arab Emirates by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to Rustem Umerov, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council chief, who was present at the meeting.
They were also at last month's talks in the same place as the Trump administration tries to steer the two countries toward a settlement. At the time, Zelenskyy described the issue of who would control the Donbas industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine as ''key.''
Officials have provided no information about any progress in the discussions.
General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was also present at the talks, according to a spokesman for the general who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
