Speaking at a press conference in the James S. Brady Press Conference Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday, November 9, 2026, US President Donald Trump said the FBI is investigating the relationship between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and a woman suspected of being a Chinese intelligence agent. Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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President Donald Trump said the United States sees a growing desire to end Russia’s war in Ukraine as Kiev and Russia prepare for U.S.-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi later on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said recent battlefield victories had strengthened Kiev’s negotiating position ahead of the talks.
President Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that it has been more than four-and-a-half years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, and both sides are tired of fighting.
“We’re also seeing a very strong tendency to end Russia and Ukraine,” Trump said, adding, “We’re engaged in that because we want people to stop getting killed again.”
His comments followed an assessment by U.S. officials that Russia and Kiev have privately shown some flexibility regarding a potential territorial swap, Reuters reported.
However, a senior Ukrainian official denied suggestions that Kiev was considering territorial concessions, telling Reuters that any discussion on territory would need to take place between national leaders and be accompanied by appropriate security.
Russia has publicly maintained demands that Ukraine surrender the entire eastern region of Donbas, including territory not occupied by Russia.
Separately, President Zelenskyy said on Monday that recent battlefield victories in Ukraine and mounting Russian losses had improved Kiev’s negotiating power.
“Currently, the Ukrainian military is truly strengthening Ukraine’s negotiating position,” he said in an evening speech, calling on the United States to persuade Russia to end the war.
The remarks came as U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials prepared for two days of talks in Abu Dhabi, the first three-way talks since February.
U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will lead Washington’s mediation efforts, and postwar security for Ukraine is expected to feature prominently.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that discussions have progressed on a possible postwar security framework for Ukraine and Europe.
“Nothing has been decided yet, but maybe we’ll see some progress in Abu Dhabi,” Rubio said.
The new diplomacy comes as fighting continues and questions grow over the scale of Russia’s wartime losses.
The rebel hacker group Belarus Cyber Partisan said its analysis of data it claimed to have obtained from Russia’s State Statistical Service had identified 393,881 deaths related to military operations or their effects from 2022 to August 2026.
The group said its numbers were based on death records explicitly coded as being due to hostilities or their consequences. The government acknowledged that the figure may include civilians and other conflict-related deaths, but excludes personnel who are missing but not declared dead.
According to Russian media outlet Kommersant, Rosstat acknowledged being the target of a cyberattack but denied that its database had been compromised. The hacker’s claims and underlying datasets have not been independently and fully verified.
Separately, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that between February 2022 and June 2026, between 400,000 and 450,000 Russian military personnel were killed.
At its peak, this would be more than nine times the combined death toll for Soviet and Russian troops in wars since World War II, the think tank said.
Citing extensive analysis of leaked records, the Moscow Times reported that the conflict will become Russia’s fourth leading cause of death from 2022 onwards, with around 450,000 war-related deaths. The paper said it matched a sample of names but was unable to verify the entire data set.
