The United States and Russia agreed Thursday to reestablish a 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, Commander of the US European Command – who is also the NATO Supreme Allied Commander 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 where 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 in a nearly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) stretch of eastern and southern Ukraine.
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 added in an interview broadcast by French TV channel France 2 late Wednesday.
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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 son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, according to Rustem Umerov, head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, 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 would control the industrial hub of Donbas 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 civilians have been killed and just over 40,000 injured since the war began last December, according to the United Nations 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.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
