KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Russian negotiators told his team in Abu Dhabi they had already occupied half of the Donbas that remains under Ukrainian control.
He described the exchange after receiving a second report from Ukraine’s negotiating team on its Abu Dhabi meetings. The claim, he said, came from Russian military officers and intelligence officials, “and they were serious about it.”
His team pushed back on the spot. “We don’t know how you can even say such things. We have video footage, images, other things proving that these areas are under our control,” the Ukrainian side answered, according to Zelenskyy.
“This is the problem. Putin lives in a different reality.”
Putin, Zelenskyy predicted, will tell the Americans he needs one or two months to fully occupy the east of Ukraine. “I can draw a picture for him too where I fully occupy Russia. But it’s not true,” Zelenskyy said.
What encouraged him, he said, was the American response: the U.S. side confirmed the Ukrainian assessment of what is happening on the battlefield.
A Leaders’ Meeting, and a Divided Kherson
That gap is why the two presidents need to talk directly, Zelenskyy argued. “This is why we need to sit and speak at the level of leaders. There are a lot of questions,” he said.
He gave Kherson as an example. The city is divided by the river today, with Russian forces holding one bank and Ukraine the other. “But people want to live united on both banks. This is a Ukrainian city,” he said. “Such issues are sensitive, but we have to speak about them.”
On Wednesday, he said, the negotiating teams will discuss the possibility of a meeting at the level of leaders. “I’m not sure that Russia is ready, but we will raise this topic,” he said.
Zelenskyy made the remarks in a conversation with journalists and published the account on X on Tuesday.