(Bloomberg) — Top US and Russian officials started meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine, without anyone from Kyiv taking part and as Europe struggles to respond to the rapid pace of events.
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The talks in Riyadh follow US President Donald Trump’s landmark phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last week in which he reversed key US positions on the conflict. They could pave the way for a summit of the two leaders as soon as next week. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned his country won’t recognize “any agreements about us without us.”
Television pictures showed White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio sitting opposite Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan was also there.
The meeting is a way to “determine if the Russians, perhaps, are serious and if they’re on the same page” with the US when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine, according to State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce, who briefed reporters traveling with Rubio.
“The main thing is to begin a real normalization of relations between us and Washington,” Ushakov told Russian state television on his arrival in Riyadh late Monday. The meeting will focus on preparations for possible negotiations over a settlement in Ukraine and for a meeting between the two presidents, he added.
The head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, may join the talks to deal with economic issues, Ushakov said. US firms have lost $300 billion from quitting the Russian market since the war started, Dmitriev said.
“The Russian delegation is in Riyadh to improve US-Russia relations,” said Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia. “The American delegation, or so we have been led to believe, is in Riyadh to start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Those are very different agendas.”
Trump described last week’s 90-minute call with Putin as “highly productive” and said they’d likely meet in Saudi Arabia. It was the first publicly announced contact between the Russian leader and a US president since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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Trump abandoned his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy of refusing to engage with Russia without Kyiv’s involvement. He also reversed long-held US positions supporting the recovery of all Ukraine’s occupied lands and ambitions to join NATO, though doubts about the viability of keeping those pledges had grown under Biden.
Elon Musk, a Trump adviser, praised the diplomatic blitz. “This is what competent leadership looks like,” he said on X, alongside video of the Russian delegation arriving in Riyadh.
Following a European outcry that the US and Russia were moving forward without any representation from Ukraine, the US clarified that these were exploratory talks, and not the start of full-blown negotiations to end the three-year war.
“I don’t think people should view this as something that is about details or moving forward in some kind of negotiation,” Bruce said.
Rubio and other US officials have said Ukraine would be part of any negotiation to solve the conflict. Still, European leaders have been shocked by the speed of Trump’s push to begin talks with Putin, especially after Vice President JD Vance excoriated European governments on Friday at the Munich Security Conference.
“Even if we’re feeling furious we have to keep a clear head,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told public broadcaster ZDF. “We shouldn’t make the huge mistake of doing Putin a favor by talking up these talks as more important than they really are. There cannot be a lasting peace if it’s not a peace for us Europeans.”
After hosting a mini-summit of European allies in Paris on Monday to discuss Ukraine and ways to boost defense spending, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Trump and then with Zelenskiy.
“We seek a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Macron said in a post on his X social media account. “To achieve this, Russia must end its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians.”
The Trump administration has said it’s opposed to deploying US troops as part of any security package for Kyiv, which puts added pressure on Europe to increase military spending.
The Paris talks exposed European divisions. While UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he’d be ready to deploy peacekeeping forces to Ukraine alongside other nations, Polish Premier Donald Tusk ruled out sending troops. While his country would continue to back Ukraine militarily, Poland also expected allies to help boost defenses on Europe’s eastern flank that’s most exposed to Russia.
“If I can’t defend myself — that’s what I told my colleagues today — if the European Union can’t defend itself, how can we provide guarantees to others,” Tusk told reporters. “These would be empty guarantees.”
(Updates with former US ambassador’s comment in the seventh paragraph.)
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