ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to the United Arab Emirates late Sunday as momentum grows for potential peace talks ending Moscow's war on the country.
U.S. President Donald Trump last week suggested he would be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia. The UAE, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, long has been floated as a possible site for peace talks as well given the large population of Russian and Ukrainian expatriates who have flooded the country since the war began, and due to the Emirates' work on prisoner exchanges in the past.
Zelenskyy arrived in Abu Dhabi after attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Footage released by his office showed him and his wife, Olena Zelenska, being greeted by an Emirati official and honor guard at the airport late Sunday night.
Zelenska has traveled to the UAE since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, but this trip is Zelenskyy’s first to the UAE since the war began.
“Our top priority is bringing even more of our people home from captivity,” Zelenskyy's office said in messages online. “We will also focus on investments and economic partnership, as well as a large-scale humanitarian program.”
The United Arab Emirates' state-run WAM news agency did not immediately report on Zelenskyy's arrival, which was unusual.
It wasn't immediately clear what his agenda would be while he was in the country, though Abu Dhabi is hosting its biennial International Defense Exhibition and Conference arms show this week, where both Ukraine and Russia have displayed arms — even as Moscow faces Western sanctions over the war.
Russian money continues to flood into Dubai’s red-hot real estate market. Daily flights between the Emirates and Moscow provide a lifeline for both those fleeing conscription and the Russian elite. The U.S. Treasury under former President Joe Biden also expressed concerns about the amount of Russian cash flowing into the Arabian Peninsula country.
Zelenskyy's visit comes as Denis Manturov, Russia's first deputy prime minister, visited earlier Sunday with UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the country's president and ruler of Abu Dhabi. A readout from WAM described the talks as focusing on “growing UAE-Russia ties and ways to advance shared interests, benefiting both nations and their peoples.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead a delegation to Saudi Arabia this week for direct talks with Russian officials over the war. The outreach and Trump's direct call with Putin have upended years of U.S. policy under Biden that isolated Moscow over its Feb. 24, 2022, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press