US, Russian and Ukrainian officials are meeting in Abu Dhabi for another round of peace talks aimed at ending the war.

Russia occupies around 20 per cent of Ukraine, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region. Moscow wants Kyiv to accept its territorial claims, give up its Nato ambitions and rule out the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine.

Kyiv, meanwhile, wants Russian forces to withdraw and is seeking firm security guarantees to prevent another invasion.

“I don’t expect any tangible progress in the Abu Dhabi talks. The reason is simple and remains the same – Putin has absolutely no intention to negotiate seriously. He remains totally fixated on the [destruction] of Ukraine,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian member of parliament from the Servant of the People party, told Al Jazeera.

The talks are being led by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Ukraine’s chief negotiator Rustem Umerov, and Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky. European officials are also expected to be in Abu Dhabi, although Russia has ruled out their direct participation.

Ukraine said it struck a base belonging to Russia’s elite Rubicon drone unit in the occupied city of Berdyansk in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, around 107km behind the front lines.

Ukraine’s general staff said a temporary deployment site and a drone control point were hit, adding that the extent of Russian losses was still being assessed, The Kyiv Independent reported.

Ukrainian officials said the strike also killed or disabled trained specialists responsible for training drone operators and sharing their expertise.

Rubicon is a key Russian drone unit specialising in disrupting Ukrainian supply routes, targeting drone teams and intercepting reconnaissance and strike drones.

The attack is part of Ukraine’s expanding campaign of drone strikes against Russian military targets deep behind the front lines.

US officials say Russia and Ukraine have privately shown some flexibility over territorial concessions ahead of US-led peace talks in Abu Dhabi.

A US official told the BBC that “both sides have shown a little bit of flexibility privately”, but said the territorial issue would not be resolved until there was clarity on Ukraine’s future “security architecture”.

“They will not solve the Donetsk issue and the territorial issue until they know what the security architecture is going to be after the war,” the official said. “And keep in mind, we’re not going to be able to finalise one without the other.”

Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump said that he believed the war would end soon and suggested Ukraine would emerge with a “different shape” after the war.

Russian forces have struck the Trypillia thermal power plant in Kyiv region, raising concerns about further damage to the country’s already strained energy infrastructure ahead of winter.

Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Centrenergo said that the full extent of the damage was still being assessed.

“The nature of the Russian attacks has changed significantly,” Centrenergo CEO Serhiy Isachenko said.

“Within a short period, the enemy may use various types of weaponry – including ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones – against a single target. This creates new challenges for the protection of energy infrastructure.”

The company warned that Russia was increasingly combining different weapons, including ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, against individual targets, making power facilities harder to defend.

Located about 30km south of Kyiv, the plant was once a major electricity supplier to Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Cherkasy regions.

Donald Trump said that Washington was seeing a “very strong inclination” towards ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, suggesting that both Moscow and Kyiv were “tired of fighting”.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on the eve of US-led trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, Trump said discussions on ending the conflict were progressing well. “We’re having a very good conversation about that in Abu Dhabi,” he said.

Ahead of the Abu Dhabi negotiations, a US official said both Russia and Ukraine were privately showing some “flexibility” over the possibility of exchanging territory.

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Both Russia and Ukraine are showing some flexibility privately on the possible exchange of territory ahead of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi this week as President Donald Trump ramps up efforts to resolve the conflict, a US official said on Monday.

The official, briefing reporters ahead of talks that begin on Tuesday, said security guarantees for Ukraine will be a major topic for the discussions, including the potential for a NATO-style Article 5 defense for Kyiv.

Both Ukraine and Russia have been adamant about territory. Ukraine wants Russia pushed back to the original border between the two countries, while Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to obtain all of the Donbas region.

But the official said both sides are privately showing some potential for a compromise. Any territorial agreement would likely come at the end of negotiations once other items are agreed upon, including a postwar security architecture, the official said.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a car killed two people in Russia’s border region of Belgorod on Monday, local officials said on Telegram.

Belgorod is a frequent target of Ukrainian cross-border attacks.

Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted officials in a Russian-held part of Zaporizhzhia region as saying Ukrainian drones had killed three people.

Finland is looking to Ukraine’s defence experience as the country seeks to fortify a 1,340km border with Russia.

Finland’s army commander, Lieutenant General Pasi Välimäki, said Kyiv’s “extensive defense lines” and anti-tank obstacles have helped to slow down Russia’s attacks.

“Conditions in Finland are more challenging,” General Pasi Välimäki told Bloomberg.

“If we build fortifications and dig anti-tank ditches or obstacles as deep as those in Ukraine, how long does it take before our environment turns them into artificial ponds?”