Witkoff and Kushner will not take part in the new round of Ukraine talks in the UAE

U.S. President’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will not take part in the upcoming talks on Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“They are going to continue the talks this week, this time in a bilateral format. U.S. participation is possible, but it won’t be Steve and Jared,” Rubio said.

The next round of talks on the Russia–Ukraine conflict will take place in Abu Dhabi on February 1, the Kremlin said. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov noted that the date is “tentative, but for now we’re proceeding on that basis.”

The previous round of talks was held on January 23–24 in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. At that meeting, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations for the first time directly discussed a peace plan that the United States has been coordinating with them since late October 2025.

According to Rubio, the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine are focused on the issue of “territorial claims over Donetsk.” At the same time, after the meeting in the UAE, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv would “under no circumstances” give up its claims to the territories.

The Kremlin insists that the territorial issue—which is part of the “Anchorage formula”—is of fundamental importance for Moscow. Peskov said the talks began at the “expert level” and are “very difficult.”

“From here on, everything will depend on how constructive the interlocutors are,” he said.