The top diplomats from Russia and the U.S. met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to discuss improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, in talks that represented a rapid and major change in American foreign policy under U.S. President Donald Trump.
No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which comes as the beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country won’t accept any outcome from this week’s talks if Kyiv doesn’t take part. European allies have also expressed concerns they are being sidelined.
Beyond Ukraine, the meeting — attended by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other senior officials — is expected to focus on thawing relations between the two countries, whose ties have fallen to their lowest level in decades. It is meant to pave the way for a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The meeting marks the most extensive contact between the two countries since Moscow’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine.
“President Putin has been repeating his words about his readiness for peace talks from the very beginning,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Peskov noted that “a comprehensive settlement, a long-term settlement, a viable settlement” of the conflict in Ukraine is impossible without “a comprehensive consideration of security issues” in Europe.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the meeting is aimed at determining how serious the Russians are about wanting peace and whether detailed negotiations can be started. Bruce has said that even though Ukraine will not be at the table Tuesday, any actual peace negotiations will include the country.
Kyiv’s participation in such talks was a bedrock of U.S. policy under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, whose administration also led international efforts to isolate Russia over the war. White House officials have also pushed back against the notion that Europe has been left out of the conversation, noting that administration officials have spoken to several leaders.
Trump envoy meets with EU leader
The recent U.S. diplomatic blitz on the war has sent Ukraine and key allies scrambling to ensure a seat at the table amid concerns that Washington and Moscow could press ahead with a deal that won’t be favourable to them. Kyiv’s absence at Tuesday’s talks has rankled many Ukrainians, and France called an emergency meeting of European Union countries and the U.K. on Monday to discuss the war.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said he spoke by phone to Trump and Zelenskyy following the meeting he called in Paris.
European leaders met Monday in Paris for emergency talks about the ongoing Ukraine war as the U.S. forges ahead on peace talks with Russia.
“We seek a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Macron wrote on social media platform X. “To achieve this, Russia must end its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians,” he said.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg on Tuesday that Europe wants to work with the U.S. in talks aimed at ending the Ukraine war, according to her office.
“Financially and militarily, Europe has brought more to the table than anyone else,” she said in a post on the X social media platform after meeting Kellogg in Brussels. “And we will step up.”
Von der Leyen’s office said in a statement that during the meeting she had “reiterated that any resolution must respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, backed by strong security guarantees.”
She also outlined Europe’s plans “to scale up defence production and spending, reinforcing both European and Ukrainian military capabilities,” her office said.
Multiple world leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted with skepticism over U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to broker an end to the war through discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Overnight drone barrage
The meeting at the Diriyah Palace in the Saudi capital of Riyadh also highlights de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts to be a major diplomatic player, burnishing a reputation severely tarnished by the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi state media described the talks as happening at the prince’s direction.
Zelenskyy said he would travel to the kingdom later this week.
Rubio was accompanied by U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff, while Lavrov sat next to the Kremlin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov.
Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan and national security adviser Musaed al Alban joined Rubio, Lavrov and others for the start of the meeting but were expected to leave early in the talks.
Meanwhile, Russia continued to pummel Ukraine with drones, according to Kyiv’s military. The Ukrainian air force said Russian troops launched a barrage of 176 drones at Ukraine overnight, most of which were destroyed or disabled by jamming.
One Russian drone struck a residential building in Dolynska in the Kirovohrad region, wounding a mother and her two children and prompting an evacuation of 38 apartments, the regional administration reported. Four more residential buildings were damaged by drone debris in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine, according to local officials.
