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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — 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 said Monday, in what would be the most significant meeting between the sides since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor nearly three years ago.
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 U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The recent U.S. 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 favorable to them.
France called an emergency meeting of European Union countries and the U.K. 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.
U.S. 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 U.S.-Russian relations, as well as preparing possible talks on the Ukrainian settlement and organizing 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 travelling with Rubio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Local residents stand at a bus stop in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, May 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov)
Kyiv to be included in actual peace talks
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 U.S. 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.
U.S. Defense 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 U.S.-Russian contacts, nearly three years into a war that has seen ties fall to the lowest level in decades.
Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked briefly on the sidelines of a G-20 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, U.S. and Russian spymasters met in Turkey amid Washington’s concerns that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons amid battlefield setbacks.
Tuesday’s talks follow a telephone call between Trump and Putin in which the American president said they “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.”
The call upended years of U.S. policy, ending the isolation of Moscow over its Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine. After the call, Trump phoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to inform him about their conversation.
Trump on Sunday told reporters that Zelenskyy “will be involved” but did not elaborate.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Ukraine might not accept any outcome
The Ukrainian president said Monday his country had not been invited to the upcoming talks and won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part.
The U.S.-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 said he would travel to Turkey on Monday and to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, but that his trip to the Arab nation was unrelated to the U.S.-Russia talks.
EU officials have pushed for the bloc — which along with the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.”
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.
Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs aide, said the Riyadh talks will focus on “the restoration of normal ties, the possible start of Ukraine talks and the prospects of contacts on the top level.”
He said that Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, could join the Russian delegation in Riyadh.
Dmitriev reportedly helped broker last week’s release of American Marc Fogel, who was freed in exchange for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian cryptocurrency expert who faced Bitcoin fraud charges in the United States.
Zelenskyy also confirmed that Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, would arrive in Kyiv on Feb. 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, adding: “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.”
Zelenskyy said the possibility of opening up his country’s mineral resources to the U.S., 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.
— By Matthew Lee, Justin Spike And Barry Hatton in Riyadh
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