Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Senior US and Russian officials will meet in Riyadh on Tuesday, in what the Kremlin characterised as an effort to set up talks to end the war in Ukraine and discuss “restoring all bilateral relations”.
US President Donald Trump’s administration confirmed that secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff would meet the Russian delegation in the Saudi capital. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said Kyiv “will not take part” in the talks and “did not know anything about it”.
Speaking from the United Arab Emirates, Zelenskyy added: “Ukraine regards any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine as ones that have no result, and we cannot recognise . . . any agreements about us without us.”
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, will head Moscow’s delegation to Riyadh, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesperson, told reporters on Monday.
Russia is framing the meeting as the start of its return from the cold after years of western attempts to isolate it in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
“The presidents agreed to leave behind this absolutely ridiculous period in US-Russia relations when they essentially didn’t speak except for isolated technical and humanitarian issues,” said Lavrov on Monday.
US and western officials have described this week’s meetings as logistical and aimed at a possible meeting between Trump and Putin and ending the Ukraine war.
“Hopefully, we will make some really good progress with regard to Russia-Ukraine,” Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday, in reference to the Riyadh talks.
The hastily convened talks have alarmed Ukraine and its European allies. The US did not inform its allies of Trump’s call with Putin in advance and has largely left them out of the process, although it has said Ukraine may join talks at a later date.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who has tried to play a brokering role in the conflict in the past, has invited Zelenskyy to visit Ankara on Tuesday.
Rubio said there was “no process” yet to bring an end to the war, and that the team was exploring ways to create one. He said he expected to involve Ukraine and Europe eventually in some way.
“If it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet, but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the ones that were invaded. And the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well,” he said on CBS.
Russia dismissed European efforts to carve out a place at the peace talks and possibly send a peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine.
“Their desire to be part of the Ukraine negotiating process has been satisfied more than once,” Lavrov said, referring to the failed Minsk process, led by France and Germany, that brokered a fragile ceasefire following Russia’s initial invasion in 2014.
As long as European countries want to strengthen Ukraine militarily, “I don’t know if there’s anything for them to do at the negotiating table,” he added.
Peskov said it was “difficult to talk about” a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine because it would involve Nato members and “Nato troops will be deployed on Ukrainian territory”.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has offered to put British “boots on the ground” in Ukraine, ahead of a summit with other European leaders on Monday.
