Morning opening: Trilateral talks on Ukraine war in Abu Dhabi get back under way

Jakub Krupa

Ukraine-Russia talks have restarted this morning, after Russian president’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev reported “positive movement forward” last night.

“The warmongers from Europe, from Britain, are constantly trying to interfere with this process, constantly trying to meddle in it. And the more such attempts there are, the more we see that progress is definitely being made,” he claimed.

The talks continue in a trilateral format of consultations, Ukraine’s lead negotiator and former defence minister Rustem Umerov said.

Separately, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk is in Kyiv today to express his solidarity with the wartorn country amid continuing energy, heat outages. Last week Poland was one of the EU countries which sent heat and power generators to the Ukrainian capital.

His visit comes just days after Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte visited Ukraine.

Separately, EU leaders António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen are expected in Paris today for talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, about the upcoming EU summit on competitiveness on 12 February.

Macron, somewhat sidelined by the seemingly growing German-Italian partnership, will want to put on the table his ideas on how to fix the bloc.

Lots for us to cover.

It’s Thursday, 5 February 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.