Trump administration officials to meet with Russian counterparts on Ukraine war

Secretary of State Marco Rubio lands in Riyadh ahead of Tuesday’s negotiations on the Ukraine war with a Russian delegation.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, is received by Saudi Arabia's Deputy Minister for Protocol Affairs Abdulmajeed al-Smari in Riyadh on Monday. Picture: AFP

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia ahead of talks between top US officials and Russian envoys on how to end the war in Ukraine, discussions that signal the Trump administration is eager to push for an agreement.

Mr Rubio, along with national security adviser Mike Waltz and Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, would meet with a Russian delegation in Riyadh on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Monday.

The talks would be “devoted primarily to restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations”, the Kremlin said.

“We’re moving along,” Mr Trump told reporters in Florida on Sunday of the coming talks. “We’re trying to get peace with Russia, Ukraine, and we’re working very hard on it.”

Mr Rubio, who was in Jerusalem over the weekend, is also expected to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday for discussions on the Middle East. The trip comes as Arab leaders have pushed back against Mr Trump’s plan to move Palestinians out of Gaza, and the prospects for extending the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas remain in the balance.

The arrangements for the US-Russia meeting were firmed up following a Friday call between Mr Rubio and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, which Moscow said was at the initiative of the Americans. The State Department said that the two diplomats had discussed “the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Mr Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign-policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were heading to Riyadh for talks involving, among other things, preparations for negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement, Russian state news agency TASS said.

The rapid push to convene US-Russian talks followed a call last week between Mr Trump and Putin.

Trump said the conversation led him to believe Putin wants a settlement. “We spoke long and hard,” Mr Trump said. “Steve Witkoff was with him for a very extended period, like about three hours. I think [Putin] wants to stop fighting.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted that his country be involved in any talks about ending the war, which escalated following Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of his country.

Mr Zelensky said on NBC’s Meet the Press that Ukraine must be at the table and that it was important that European nations be represented as well.

“At the table, it’s very important to hear America, Europe, Ukraine, Russia,” he said.

The Trump administration’s Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, said at a security conference in Munich on Saturday that he didn’t foresee a direct role for European nations in the talks but that Ukraine would be at the negotiating table when formal peace talks are held.

Those comments alarmed European officials, who say that the outcome of the Ukraine war is a paramount concern for security on the continent.

In an article for a British daily newspaper on Monday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said for the first time that Britain was ready to put its own troops on the ground in Ukraine should it be necessary to guarantee that country’s security.

Mr Trump on Sunday said Mr Zelensky would be involved in the talks, though he didn’t say at what stage, and insisted that both the Ukrainian and Russian leaders wanted to end the war.

“They want to end it fast, both of them, and Zelensky wants to end it too,” he said.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mr Waltz didn’t address the issue of Ukrainian involvement in the coming talks, but defended how the US was proceeding.

“They may not like some of the sequencing that is going on in these negotiations”, he said of European leaders, “but I have to push back on any notion that they aren’t being consulted – they absolutely are”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he would host an urgent meeting of European leaders on Monday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and European security. The meeting will include the leaders of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as the Secretary-General of NATO, among others.

The Wall Street Journal