Senior American and Russian officials, including the countries’ top diplomats, will hold talks on improving their ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, officials say.
The talks, scheduled for Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, mark another pivotal step by the Trump administration to reverse U.S. policy on isolating Russia, and are meant to pave the way for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The recent US diplomatic blitz on the war has sent Kyiv 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. France called an emergency meeting of European Union countries and the UK on Monday to decide how to respond.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov set off for the Saudi capital on Monday, according to Russian state TV. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. Ukraine will not participate.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the talks will be primarily focused on “restoring the entire range of US-Russian relations, as well as preparing possible talks on the Ukrainian settlement and organising a meeting of the two presidents”.
Bruce said the meeting is aimed at determining how serious the Russians are about wanting peace and whether detailed negotiations can be started.
“I think the goal, obviously, for everyone is to determine if this is something that can move forward,” she told reporters traveling with Rubio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Bruce said that even though Ukraine would not be at the table for Tuesday’s talks, actual peace negotiations would only take place with Ukraine’s involvement. Kyiv’s participation in any peace talks was a bedrock of US policy under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
Speaking on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures program, Witkoff said he and Waltz will be “having meetings at the direction of the president” and hope to make “some really good progress with regard to Russia-Ukraine”.
Witkoff didn’t directly respond to a question about whether Ukraine would have to give up a “significant portion” of its territory as part of any negotiated settlement. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia — two key items on Putin’s wish list.
The talks would mark a significant expansion of US-Russian contacts, nearly three years into a war that has seen ties fall to the lowest level in decades. Lavrov and then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked briefly on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in India nearly two years ago. The 10-minute conversation didn’t ease tensions, and in fact they increased in the months that followed. In the fall of 2022, US and Russian spymasters met in Turkey amid Washington’s concerns that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons amid battlefield setbacks.
Trump on Sunday told reporters that Zelenskyy “will be involved” but did not elaborate. The Ukrainian president said on Monday his country had not been invited to the upcoming talks and won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part.
The US-Russia talks would “yield no results” given the absence of any Ukrainian officials, Zelenskyy said on a conference call with journalists from the United Arab Emirates.
Zelenskyy met with the leader of the United Arab Emirates on Monday, his first to the UAE since the war began.
“Our top priority is bringing even more of our people home from captivity,” Zelenskyy’s office said in messages online.
“We will also focus on investments and economic partnership, as well as a large-scale humanitarian program.”
EU officials have pushed for the bloc — which along with the US has staunchly supported Kyiv — to have a say in any Ukraine peace talks, and Zelenskyy and his officials also insisted that Europe needs to be present at the negotiations.
Lavrov on Monday was dismissive when asked about a possible role for Europe, saying that “I don’t know what they have to do at the negotiations table”.
Asked about expectations from the talks in Riyadh, he said that Trump and Putin in their call “agreed to leave behind that absolutely abnormal period in relations between our great powers when they effectively halted any contacts except for some technical and humanitarian issues”.
“The presidents agreed that it’s necessary to resume a dialogue on all issues that can be solved with Russian and US participation,” Lavrov said.
“They mentioned the Ukrainian settlement along with the situation in the Middle East and some other regions of the world which aren’t quite calm at the moment.”
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Lavrov bluntly ruled out the possibility that Moscow would cede any of its territorial gains as part of a potential settlement, saying that “there is not even a thought” about it.
Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the four regions that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured and renounce its bid to join NATO as part of any prospective peace deal — demands Kyiv has rejected.
Zelenskyy also confirmed that Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, retired General Keith Kellogg, would arrive in Kyiv on February 20 for “broad conversations about security guarantees”.
Zelenskyy said he wanted to bring Kellogg to the front line and hoped the American would take what he learned from his Ukraine trip back to the White House
“I think after he goes back to the United States we will have an understanding on when I will have a meeting with President Trump,” he said.
Zelenskyy said the possibility of opening up his country’s mineral resources to the US, as Trump has suggested, would need to come with a written agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine.
Ukraine and several European countries have insisted that without security guarantees, Russia could invade the country again, even if a settlement is reached.
Those guarantees could include NATO membership, which Hegseth poured cold water on, weapons and economic support, Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine has also expressed hopes of joining the EU, but that is complicated and could take years.
