US, Russia agree to re-establish military-to-military dialogue following Ukraine talks
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The US and Russia agreed on Thursday to resume high-level military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between Russian and American military officials in Abu Dhabi, the United States European Command said in a statement.
This agreement was reached following meetings between Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the commander of the US European Command – who is also the supreme commander of NATO, Europe – and senior military officials of Russia and Ukraine, said in a statement.
The station “will provide consistent military-to-military communications as the parties continue to work towards a lasting peace,” the statement said. High-level military contacts were suspended in 2021, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Grynkewich was in the capital of the United Arab Emirates as talks between US, Russian and Ukrainian officials on ending the war in Ukraine entered a second day as Moscow escalated its attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid.
Russia continues to target Ukraine’s power grid, aiming to deny citizens power and weaken their will to fight, while fighting continues along a nearly 1,000-kilometer front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump says he got Russian President Vladimir Putin to slow down attacks on Ukraine’s power grid during the coldest winter in years. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that Russia is simply shifting its focus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the Russian invasion almost four years ago. “And there is a large number of people that Ukraine thinks are missing,” he said in an interview broadcast by French TV channel France 2 on Wednesday.
The last time Zelenskyy gave a death toll on the battlefield, in early 2025, he said 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.
Delegates from Moscow and Kyiv were joined on Thursday in the capital of the United Arab Emirates by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s security and defense council, who was present at the meeting.
They were also in talks last month at the same venue where the Trump administration is trying to steer the two countries towards a settlement. At the time, Zelenskyy described the issue of who will control the Donbas industrial base in eastern Ukraine as “key.”
Officials did not provide information about any progress in the negotiations.
Zelenskyy has also said that his country needs security guarantees from the US and Europe to prevent any post-war Russian aggression.
Ukrainians must feel that there is real progress in peace and “not in a situation where the Russians are exploiting everything to their advantage and continue their strikes,” Zelenskyy said on social media late Wednesday.
Last year there was a 31 percent increase in the number of victims of Ukrainian civilians compared to 2024, said the rights group Human Rights Watch in a report published on Wednesday.
About 15,000 Ukrainian citizens have been killed and more than 40,000 injured since the war began last December, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived in Kyiv on an official visit on Thursday.
Two people were injured in the Ukrainian capital as a result of Russian night strikes, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. In the wider Kyiv region, a man was wounded in the chest, authorities said.
Russia fired 183 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian military.
Russian air defense planes shot down 95 Ukrainian drones overnight in several areas, the Azov Sea and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2016, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
