Ukraine-Russia talks hit Donbass impasse in Abu Dhabi (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: A second day of talks between Ukraine and Russia aimed at ending the war between them has begun in Abu Dhabi. The first day of negotiations was described as substantive and productive. The talks are focused specifically on the future of Ukraine's eastern Donbass region. This was the front line a few days ago. Moscow is demanding full control of the area, including Luhansk and Donetsk. That's a price of peace, something Ukraine's President Zelensky has repeatedly rejected. I've been speaking to the BBC's Sarah Rainsford, who's in Kyiv, and I asked her if the talks in Abu Dhabi were leading to any progress.

[00:00:39] Speaker 2: To be quite honest, we're hearing very little. There's a few words that have come out from the Ukrainian side describing the talks so far as substantive and productive. But of course, the key issue at the heart of all of this is the question of territory, a very, very sensitive question, in which Russia is pushing to be handed territory in the Donbass, which it hasn't won through the fighting, and Ukraine is saying that's utterly unacceptable. So, it does seem to be a massive sticking point, and there seems to be no breakthrough on that issue. And I'm not expecting one, frankly. We have heard from the Kremlin saying that the fights in Ukraine will continue until Ukraine makes what Mr. Putin's spokesman called the right decisions. So, obviously, Russia is not shifting any ground in that sense politically. And meanwhile, you know, the violence, the Russian attacks go on. So, overnight, there was quite a long air raid here in Kyiv. There were 183 drones launched against Ukraine last night, several missiles, a couple of people injured here in the capital, and many major cities, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, also came under attack. Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president here in Ukraine, was speaking yesterday in an interview, and he made the point that Ukraine wants its allies to keep piling on the pressure on Russia, so that it's not just Ukraine that's under pressure to make concessions, but that Russia economically is under pressure, but also militarily. He said it would take Russia some two years to claim the territory it wants through fighting, and it would cost, he said, something like 800,000 Russian soldiers' lives. So, he was saying that this is precisely the point when Russia needs to come under more pressure, both in terms of helping Ukraine militarily and also in terms of its economy. He said that that was the way forward, not for Ukraine to be forced into any kind of concessions on territory.

[00:02:28] Speaker 1: And Sarah, you have been speaking to some Ukrainians who appear to be preparing for the prospect of Russia taking more territory in the east, including a widow who has had to remove her husband's remains from the Donbass to Kyiv.

[00:02:45] Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. People here are making really unimaginable decisions because of the situation. So, people from the Donbass, as you mentioned, a woman called Natalia, a widow, a war widow who we met a couple of days ago here in Kyiv, she and her family are from the Donbass, a town called Slavyansk. Her husband died three years ago in the fighting for the Donbass. He was killed. He was buried in Slavyansk, their hometown. But just in the last week, Natalia has actually exhumed his grave and brought Vitaly's body here to Kyiv to a cemetery to bury him because she is so worried about the intensification of the fighting around Slavyansk and around that area of the Donbass. She is scared that her town, her town and Vitaly's town, would come under Russian occupation and that she wouldn't be able to visit his grave anymore. So, she made this really heartbreaking decision and very, very difficult practical decision to bring Vitaly's body here and to bury him here so that she and the couple's daughter would be able to visit his grave in the future if that territory indeed is occupied by Russia. So, the kinds of choices that, you know, you could never have imagined before this war that people are now being forced into by the fighting.

[00:03:56] Speaker 1: And that was the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Kyiv there.