Senior American and Russian officials and their Saudi Arabian hosts begin “early stage” talks on possible negotiations on a Ukraine peace agreement at Diriyah Palace, in Riyadh on Tuesday. Photo courtesy Russian Foreign Ministry/EPA-EFE
Feb. 18 (UPI) — Senior American and Russian officials sat down Tuesday in Saudi Arabia for talks on a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine.
An image posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s X account from the meetings in Riyadh showed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff sitting across a huge mahogany table from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.
Hosts Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and National Security Adviser Musaed bin Mohammed al-Aiban sat at the head of table, but no officials from Ukraine were present.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited to the talks and was in Turkey on Tuesday meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said Ukraine could not accept any peace deal agreed without its involvement.
Speaking ahead of the talks, Rubio said the meeting was an initial foray to find out if Moscow was serious about wanting peace and sought to play down fears the United States was going over the heads of Ukraine and European allies, saying both would be included in any substantive negotiations.
Before heading to Saudi Arabia on Monday, Lavrov ruled out returning any of the territory Russia has captured from Ukraine.
Russia, was instead, officials said, seeking normalization of relations with the United States after years of being squeezed by ever-tougher economic and diplomatic sanctions as Western countries led by Washington pursued a policy of isolating Moscow.
Zelensky, who has consistently demanded Russia withdraw to its pre-2014 borders with Ukraine, said Monday that any decision that came out of the talks must be accompanied by “robust and reliable” security guarantees such as NATO membership or a similar alternative with U.S. backing “in one form or another” to deter future Russian aggression
“Any other decision without such guarantee — such as a fragile cease-fire — would only serve as another deception by Russia and a prelude to a new Russian war against Ukraine or other European nations,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X Monday night after European leaders held an emergency summit in Paris as the continent scrambled to respond to U.S.-Russia direct talks.
“If we don’t have NATO, then, figuratively speaking, NATO must be built in Ukraine. Figuratively speaking — but the actions must be real and substantive. This means a million-strong army, which requires funding and weapons,” Zelensky said in an earlier news release.
“We want security guarantees not on paper, but on the ground, at sea and in the sky. Air defense, aircraft, and ships.”
The Russian delegation was also accompanied by the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, with whom U.S. officials were scheduled to meet separately for economic talks.
Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump set up the United States’ first sovereign wealth fund, a state-run investment fund designed to harness the economic benefits Norway, China and the United Arab Emirates and other countries reap from similar funds.
Dmitriev, on Tuesday, sought to temper expectations the pace of forward movement or an early breakthrough from the meeting, saying it would take months rather than days or weeks, the state-run TASS news agency reported.
“We have a number of proposals our colleagues are thinking of. I believe progress may be achieved there not in the long run but during the next two to three months,” said Dmitriev who stressed that his involvement was strictly on investment and economic issues, not political matters.
The meeting came just six days after Trump first announced peace talks Wednesday, following a 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his administration is taking into account allotting 20% of the savings collected by Elon Musk’s Departme
US President Donald Trump has said his administration is considering a proposal to return 20 per cent of the savings identified by the Elon Musk-led Department
American global leadership is ending. Not because of “American decline,” or the emergence of a multipolar world, or the actions of U.S. adversaries. It’s
One image dominates Wednesday morning's Russian newspapers: senior Russian and American officials at the negotiating table in Riyadh. The Kremlin wants the Russ
