Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the US is urging Ukraine and Russia to end their war before the start of summer, ahead of the US key mid-term elections.

Zelenskiy told reporters at the weekend that Donald Trump’s delegation to the Abu Dhabi meeting, that wrapped up on February 4, had proposed a timetable to end the fighting and was pressing for a signed settlement by June before the elections.

A follow up meeting to close the remaining gaps is now planned for next week in the US, possibly in Miami where both Trump and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff have hotels.

“Elections are definitely more important for them. Let’s not be naive,” Zelenskiy told local journalists in a debrief of the last negotiations. “They say that they want to do everything by June . . . so that the war ends. And they want a clear schedule.”

As bne IntelliNews reported, the Abu Dhabi meeting ended with no breakthroughs, but was both pragmatic and concrete, according to Zelenskiy and comments by the other participants. A deal is close, but remains stuck on a few key issues, with control over territory in the Donbas at the top of the list.

Zelenskiy said the Ukrainian team had proposed a clear “sequence plan” to reach an agreement during the talks but gave no details. Russia has yet to agree, he added

The Ukrainian president has previously suggested that if Congress signs off on a proposed US security deal he would be prepared to concede territory, although that process will be difficult and would probably entail holding a referendum as technically ceding unoccupied territory is illegal under the Ukrainian constitution.

In a sign that a deal has moved closer to completion, senior Ukrainian and Russian military representatives at the meeting discussed in greater detail the technical aspects of monitoring a ceasefire. Europe wants to send a small multinational force of peacekeepers, and the US has said that it will also participate in monitoring any standstill. The Financial Times  reported earlier that Ukraine had agreed to a multi-tiered plan with western partners to respond to Russian violations of a ceasefire.

To keep the pressure on Moscow, the US is preparing a further round of sanctions targeting Russia's energy sector to increase pressure on Moscow should it reject a peace deal with Ukraine, Reuters reported on February 5.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said following a meeting with Trump and the US envoys to the talks that new harsh sanctions against Russia depend on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and target Russia's shadow fleet amongst other things if peace talks do not yield results.

"I will take it under consideration. We will see where the peace talks go," Bessent said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. He also said that Trump’s oil sanctions against Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, had helped move the talks that just wrapped up in Abu Dhabi on February 4 move forward.

In a show of cooperation, Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on February 6 that the US and Russia have reached understandings to unofficially continue observing the terms of the New START treaty which expired last week, while discussing a new agreement. The treaty was the last piece of the Cold War-era missile agreements. All those agreements have expired or been cancelled now, opening the way for a new arms race, say experts.

Peskov said: "There is an understanding, including this was discussed in Abu Dhabi, that both sides will take responsible positions and both sides recognize the need to begin negotiations on this issue as soon as possible"

A Trump adviser familiar with the negotiations confirmed  that the US and Russia agreed to maintain the status quo.  “There's no plans to start building more nuclear weapons and re-arming so you could say it's status quo”, the Trump adviser told Axios.