US-backed trilateral talks involving Ukraine and Russia will take place in Abu next week Dhabi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, while Ukrainians faced uncertainty over the fate of an energy ceasefire with Russia amid plummeting temperatures.

Kiev is under pressure from the US to secure peace in the nearly four-year war as it grapples with a Russian airstrike campaign that has devastated its energy system during one of the coldest winters in years.

The first round of talks took place at the end of January but produced no new developments on the vital territory issue, with Moscow still demanding that Kiev cede more land in its war-torn east, which it refuses to do.

Zelenskyy said new talks would take place on Wednesday and Thursday, and that Ukraine — which is fighting to stop Russia’s advance on the battlefield — was ready for a “substantial discussion.”

“Ukraine is ready for a meaningful discussion and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media platform X.

Workers race to restore power

In the capital Kyiv, 1,000 residential buildings were left without heating on Sunday, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said, as a new wave of severe cold swept across much of the country.

Temperatures in the city on Sunday hois around -15 C, as workers raced to restore heat to hundreds of the nearly 3,500 high-rises affected by the widespread grid failure on Saturday.

Officials did not directly link it to war damage, but the resulting blackouts — which spread to neighboring Moldova — underscored the vulnerability of Ukraine’s energy system after months of Russian attacks.

The Kremlin said two days ago that it had agreed to end strikes on energy infrastructure until Sunday at the request of US President Donald Trump, and Kiev said it would retaliate.

Ukraine said the suspension was supposed to last until next Friday.

2 people killed overnight

Countries have not reported major strikes to their energy systems in recent days, though Zelenskyy told the Suna day when Russia was trying to “destroy logistics and connectivity between cities and communities” with constant airstrikes.

In southeastern Ukraine, two people were killed overnight in a drone attack on a residential building in the city of Dnipro, and six people were wounded in an attack on a maternity hospital in Zaporozhye, regional officials said.

A further drop in temperatures is expected on Monday until significantly below –20 C in Kiev.

Ukraine’s private energy company DTEK said on Sunday it had restored power to 300,000 households in the southern coastal Odesa region, which was hit hard by the outage.

Grid operator Ukrenergo said late Saturday that the planned outages would be in effect across the country.

Anatoly Veresenko, a 65-year-old veteran jogging in a park in Kiev, said he was cautiously expecting more attacks and did not hold out much hope for the peace process.

“Talks are talks. We hope for peace, but we still have to fight and ensure victory.”