United States and Russia have agreed to designate teams to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, following high-level talks in Saudi Arabia that notably excluded Kyiv and the European Union. However, no timeline has been set for a potential meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Riyadh talks were the first one-on-one, direct dialogue between Washington and Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, offering the Kremlin an unusual diplomatic chance amid Western isolation. European leaders remain wary, fearing that Trump’s reversal of policy will come at a cost of concessions that redraws Europe’s security in a Cold War-style arrangement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the negotiations, warning that he would reject any decision made outside of Kyiv. European leaders grumbled in the same vein about being excluded. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday agreed to create “high-level teams” to work on a path toward ending the war, the State Department announced. Both sides also will create a mechanism for resolving current areas of tension in US-Russia relations.
Russia gave less information on the result, with Kremlin officials saying positions had been drawn and more discussions would follow “in due course.” In the meantime, Moscow repeated its call for NATO to retreat from Eastern Europe, saying that durable peace would involve exhaustive security talks.
After the meeting, Rubio predicted that US-Russia relations would be greatly improved if the war is ended, with “extraordinary opportunities” for cooperation in the future. Russian negotiator Yuri Ushakov was more reserved, saying that though talks were “not bad,” it was premature to say whether progress had been made. There is no date yet for a Trump-Putin summit.