World
U.S. and Russian officials met on Tuesday in Riyadh for their first talks on ending the war in Ukraine, as Kyiv and its European allies watched anxiously from the sidelines.
Not immediately clear when U.S., Russia will follow up on meeting, which Ukraine did not attendThe Associated Press
· Posted: Feb 18, 2025 7:13 AM EST | Last Updated: 1 hour ago
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sits next to U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during a meeting with Russian counterparts at Diriyah Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)The top diplomats from Russia and the U.S. met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia for about four hours to discuss improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, in talks that represented a rapid and major change in American foreign policy under U.S. President Donald Trump.
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs advisor, Yuri Ushakov, who attended the talks in Riyadh alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, told Russia’s Channel One that no date has been set yet for a meeting between Putin and Trump. He said the meeting was “unlikely” to take place next week.
“The delegations of the two countries need to work closely together. We are ready for this, but it is still difficult to talk about a specific date for the meeting of the two leaders,” Ushakov said.
The meeting came after Trump last week revealed a phone call he had with Putin, abruptly ending a three-year, U.S.-led effort to isolate the Russian leader over Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is shown Tuesday leaving his hotel ahead of the meeting with a U.S. delegation in Riyadh. (Hamad Mohammed/Reuters)The meeting marked the most extensive contact between the U.S. and Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting attended by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other senior American and Russian officials.
EU will be involved ‘at some point’: RubioIn an interview with The Associated Press after the meeting, Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow; to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks; and to explore closer relations and economic co-operation.
“Should this conflict come to an acceptable end, [there are] incredible opportunities … to partner with the Russians geopolitically on issues of common interest and, frankly, economically on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term,” Rubio said.
When asked about sanctions against Russia, Rubio noted that the measures were imposed as a result of Russia’s invasion and that it’s not just the U.S. that has imposed them.
“The European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed,” he said.
Keith Kellogg, U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, is shown with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on Tuesday. (Yves Herman/Reuters)Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country wouldn’t accept any outcome from this week’s talks if Kyiv doesn’t take part. European allies have also expressed concerns they are being sidelined.
Kyiv’s participation in such talks was a bedrock of U.S. policy under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, whose administration also led international efforts to isolate Russia over the war. White House officials have also pushed back against the notion that Europe has been left out of the conversation, noting that administration officials have spoken to several leaders.
Trump envoy meets with EU leaderEU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg on Tuesday that Europe wants to work with the U.S. in talks aimed at ending the Ukraine war, according to her office.
“Financially and militarily, Europe has brought more to the table than anyone else,” she said in a post on the X social media platform after meeting Kellogg in Brussels. “And we will step up.”
Von der Leyen’s office said in a statement that during the meeting she had “reiterated that any resolution must respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, backed by strong security guarantees.”
The sky lights up over Kyiv during a Russian drone strike early Tuesday. The Ukrainian air force said Russian troops launched a barrage of 176 drones at Ukraine overnight, most of which it said were destroyed or disabled. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)She also outlined Europe’s plans “to scale up defence production and spending, reinforcing both European and Ukrainian military capabilities,” her office said.
After suffering early setbacks, Russia gradually regained the initiative in combat, unleashing a series of offensives across the 1,000-kilometre front line in slow but steady gains throughout 2024. It controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, which it took in 2014.
NATO invite rankles KremlinPutin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the four regions that Russia has seized but never fully controlled, renounce its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and protect the rights of Russian speakers.
Even while the Riyadh meeting was underway, Russia signalled a hardening of its demands.
WATCH l Europe’s defence obligations front and centre ahead of talks:
European leaders discuss Ukraine war ahead of U.S.-Russia meeting
European leaders met Monday in Paris for emergency talks about the ongoing Ukraine war as the U.S. forges ahead on peace talks with Russia.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow it was “not enough” for NATO not to admit Ukraine as a member. She said the alliance must go further by disavowing a promise it made at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 that Kyiv would join at a future, unspecified, date.
“Otherwise, this problem will continue to poison the atmosphere on the European continent,” she said. There was no immediate response from NATO members, including the United States.
Meanwhile, Russia continued to pummel Ukraine with drones, according to Kyiv’s military. The Ukrainian air force said Russian troops launched a barrage of 176 drones at Ukraine overnight, most of which were destroyed or disabled by jamming.
One Russian drone struck a residential building in Dolynska in the Kirovohrad region, wounding a mother and her two children and prompting an evacuation of 38 apartments, the regional administration reported. Four more residential buildings were damaged by drone debris in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine, according to local officials.
With files from Reuters
