The US has proposed three-way technical talks with Ukraine and Russia in the UAE, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on September 25, but Vladimir Putin has again refused unless the Ukrainian .comes to Moscow.

Zelenskiy dismissed the demand out of hand. When asked about the mooted meeting by a journalist in New York, he retored: "I'll go on a f*cking missile." 

Efforts to restart US-brokered ceasefire talks that stalled in February are going nowhere, although for rhetorical purposes the Kremlin is nominally keeping the door open. 

"The American side has proposed... meeting at a technical level in a three-way format," Zelenskiy told reporters in a WhatsApp briefing, Reuters reported. "We are awaiting a proposal from the United States regarding the date, and the United States has suggested the Emirates as a possible location."

He said Ukrainian negotiators had met their US counterparts to work through the details after his meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on September 22. The Kremlin said a trilateral meeting could happen soon, but gave no details.

"We will inform and discuss these details with the European side, the Americans will talk to the Russians, and we will return in 10 days with either a new perspective or a result," Zelenskiy said.

A technical round in the Gulf would revive the format that met in Abu Dhabi in January and February, talks that ended in stalemate over territory. It is the cheapest step open to Washington before the G20 summit in Miami in December, to which the US has invited Putin. Kyiv wants something agreed before Russia resumes its campaign to freeze Ukraine into submission this winter, and Zelenskiy said he was awaiting feedback from US officials on de-escalation before the cold sets in.

The Kremlin has so far given little ground: on September 23 it said there were no preconditions for a peace track and dismissed the reciprocal energy truce Zelenskiy put to Trump in New York as rhetoric.

Putin cast further doubt on the talks on September 25, telling a culture forum in St Petersburg that Russia would decide whether to resume negotiations based on its own interests, Meduza reported. He said Moscow had been ready to return to the table after the September 18-20 State Duma election, but that a Ukrainian drone attack on the Moscow region during the vote had changed its calculus.

"After everything they have done, we will think carefully about what we need to do," Putin said, Kyiv Independent reported.

Putin claimed more than 1,600 Ukrainian drones had entered the Moscow area on the night of September 19-20 and accused Kyiv of deliberately striking polling stations. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin had earlier put the number shot down on the approach to the capital at 450. Neither figure has been independently verified. Russian authorities reported three deaths in the Moscow region, and the Moscow Oil Refinery was hit again. Putin had already tied the election turnout to the drone raids at a government meeting on September 23.

He also claimed that the success of Russia's retaliatory strikes had pushed Kyiv to seek a ceasefire on energy facilities. Zelenskiy offered a reciprocal energy truce on September 14, before the Moscow raid, and repeated the offer after meeting Trump.

The New York meeting has also produced conflicting accounts of where a leaders' summit might happen. Trump urged Zelenskiy to go to Moscow to meet Putin, and Zelenskiy turned him down, Bloomberg reported on September 25, citing unnamed sources, who said the Ukrainian president was upset to be pressed on it again. Zelenskiy's office denied the report. "This is false information," presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said, Kyiv Independent reported, adding that the two presidents had discussed trilateral talks but that Trump had not proposed a Moscow meeting.

The Kremlin says Putin will meet Zelenskiy only in Moscow and has offered security guarantees. Zelenskiy has consistently rejected this proposal out of hand. Last year the Kremlin softened its position and signalled that it would be open to trilateral meeting of presidents in a third country, such as the in the Middle East, but since the missile war escalation this summer, it has hardened its position and offering a Moscow meeting it knows Bankova will never accept. 

The same New York meeting settled one of Kyiv's longest-running arms requests, according to Zelenskiy. "At our meeting, President Trump stressed that he had made his final decision: Ukraine will receive licenses to produce Patriot missiles," he told reporters on September 25. He did not say when production could start or how many missiles it would yield, and the White House has not commented. Trump said in July that he had agreed to grant the licences, then walked the promise back weeks later.

A Ukrainian production line would not ease the interceptor shortage this winter. The Patriot is the only system in Ukraine's arsenal that reliably stops Russian ballistic missiles, and Zelenskiy announced on September 24 that Kyiv had agreed a new package of the missiles with a partner he declined to name, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Germany is separately pressing Washington to allow PAC-3 production in Europe.

Some new interceptors appear to have arrived in Ukraine as Zelenskiy reported that 60% of incoming ballistic missiles were shot down last week, double the amount from the week before. 

Washington's own contribution will not include fresh ammo. The US will leave Patriot interceptors out of a $400mn military aid package for Ukraine that the administration has committed to spend before the fiscal year ends on September 30, Reuters reported late on September 25, citing sources. The equipment, including parts for armoured vehicles, is due to reach Ukraine by October 2029. The money was approved by Congress, and Senator Dick Durbin had accused the White House of refusing to release it.