Senior American and Russian Officiaries, including the top diplomats of the countries, will have discussions about improving their relationships and negotiating an end to war in Ukraine, officials said on Monday, in the most important meeting between the pages since Moscow, fully invasion His neighbor almost three years ago.
The talks planned for Tuesday in Saudi Arabia mark another crucial step by the Trump government to reverse the US policy to isolate Russia, and are intended to make the way for a meeting between the US President Donald Trump and the Russian President Vladimir Putin pave.
The youngest US -Diplomatic flash in the war has sent Kyiv and key allies to the concern that Washington and Moscow could drive a deal that is not cheap for them. France appointed an emergency meeting of the European Union countries and the United Kingdom on Monday to decide how to react.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign advisor Yuri Ushakov set off for the Saudi capital on Monday, according to Russian state television. U.S. Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, the national security advisor Mike Waltz and special representative Steve Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, said Tammy Bruce, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ukraine will not participate.
The spokesman for Kreml, Dmitry Peskov, said the talks will primarily focus on “restoring the entire range of US Russian relationships and preparing possible discussions about the Ukrainian settlement and organizing a meeting of the two presidents”.
Bruce said the meeting aimed to determine how seriously the Russians want with peace and whether detailed negotiations can be started.
“I think the goal is of course to determine for everyone whether this is something that can move forward,” she said reporters who travel with Rubio in Riad, Saudi Arabia.
Bruce said, although Ukraine would not be at the table for the talks on Tuesday, the actual peace negotiations would only take place with the participation of Ukraine. Kyiv’s participation in peace talks was a foundation of US policy under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.
Talk about Fox News Channel Sunday morning futures The program, Witkoff, said he and Waltz will “meet the management of the president” and hope to “make some really good progress in relation to Russia-Ukraine”.
Witkoff did not answer a question whether Ukraine would have to give up a “considerable part” of its territory as part of a negotiated settlement.
The US defense minister Pete Hegseth said last week that NATO membership was unrealistic for Ukraine and suggested two key elements to Putin’s wish list.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agree to visit the other countries and start talks to end the war in Ukraine in what Trump described as a “highly productive” call. It is still unclear whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will even play a role in peace talks.
Ukraine will not accept the result if Kyiv does not participate
The talks would lead to a significant expansion of the US Russian contacts, almost three years into a war in which the connections to the lowest level have decreased for decades.
Lavrov and the then US US Foreign Minister Antony flashing languages almost two years ago on the edge of a G20 meeting in India. The 10-minute conversation did not solve the tensions and in fact they increased in the following months.
In autumn 2022, the US and Russian Spyster in Turkey met in Washington’s concerns that Moscow could fall back on nuclear weapons in the middle of Schlachtfeld.
The talks on Tuesday follow a phone call between Trump and Putin, in which the American president said they are “agreed that our respective teams will start negotiations immediately”. The call years of US policy, which ended the isolation of Moscow on February 24, 2022, in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
After the call, Trump called the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to inform him about her conversation.
Trump said reporters on Sunday that Zelenskyy will “be involved” but not explained in more detail.
The Ukrainian President said on Monday that his country had not been invited to the upcoming talks and would not accept the result if Kyiv does not participate.
The US Russia talks would “not deliver any results” because there were no Ukrainian officials, Zelenskyy said at a conference call with journalists from the United Arab Emirates.
Zelenskyy said he would travel to Turkey and Saudi Arabia on Monday, but his trip to the Arab nation was not hung with the US Russia talks.
EU officials pushed onto the block – which together with the USA Kyiv decided to have a say in all peace talks in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy and his officials also insisted that Europe must be present in the negotiations.
Lavrov on Monday was repellent when he was asked about a possible role for Europe, and said: “I don’t know what to do at the negotiating table.”
When asked about the expectations of the talks in Riad, he said that Trump and Putin “agreed to leave this absolutely abnormal time in the relationships between our great powers if they effectively stop contacts with the exception of some technical and humanitarian problems. “
“The presidents agreed that it was necessary to resume a dialogue on all topics that can be solved with the Russian and the US participation,” said Lavrov. “They mentioned the Ukrainian settlement together with the situation in the Middle East and some other regions of the world that are not quite calm at the moment.”
Lavrov bluntly excluded the possibility that Moscow will make one of his territorial profits as part of a potential settlement and said that “there is no thought”.
Putin has asked for the Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the four regions that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022, but never fully conquered and dispensed with the offer to join NATO as part of a prospective peace agreement – Kyiv demands.
Zelenskyy also confirmed that Trump’s special representative for Russia and Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, would arrive in Kyiv on February 20 to be “broad discussions about security guarantees”.
Zelenskyy said he wanted to bring Kellogg to the front and hoped I will have a meeting with President Trump. “
Zelenskyy said the opportunity to open his country’s mineral resources for the United States, Trump would have to have a written agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine. Ukraine and several European countries have insisted that Russia could get back into the country without security guarantees, even if a settlement is achieved.
These guarantees could include NATO membership to which Hegseth cast cold water, weapons and economic support, said Zelenskyy. Ukraine has also expressed hope to join the EU, but that is complicated and could take years.
