United States envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were traveling to Moscow on Thursday to meet President Vladimir Putin, a day after U.S. brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi ended without progress on a ceasefire. The Abu Dhabi meeting was the first such meeting in nine months. It produced one agreement, a new prisoner exchange, and no movement on the central disputes between the two sides, including territory, security guarantees and the order of a ceasefire against a wider settlement.
The talks focused in part on Europe’s post-war security framework. The envoys planned to brief the Kremlin on the discussions, then consult President Volodymyr Zelensky in Dublin, and press European governments to name a joint representative for future talks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the first day of the talks “very productive”, even as the core disputes remained unresolved at the end of the meeting.
On the ground, Russian air strikes on the power grid left more than 850,000 consumers without electricity across the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions. A separate tally put roughly 600,000 residents in eastern regions without power. Grid operators imposed emergency and scheduled blackouts, and operators in Kyiv warned of rolling blackouts in the capital. Ukraine said its forces struck Russian positions in occupied Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, including ammunition storage, logistics centers and a satellite communications jamming system. These claims, like the strike damage figures, come from the warring governments and have not been independently verified. The photograph in this video is a file photo of the Kremlin in Moscow under a full moon, taken on March 23, 2016, by the U.S. Department of State, which released it into the public domain. It does not show the envoys or the talks. The other screens are original Zark News graphics and are labeled as a Zark News illustration.
Full story: https://zarknews.com/us-envoys-moscow-putin-abu-dhabi-ukraine-blackout/
Sources: Horizon world briefing; Nexus Europa • November 12, 2026. File photo: U.S. Department of State (public domain). Zark News illustration.
