By Canadian Press

Top Russian and US officials meet for talks on Ukraine war without Kyiv

Feb 18, 2025 | 12:39 AM

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Top Russian and American officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin talks on improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.

The meeting at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh marks another pivotal step by the Trump administration to reverse U.S. policy on isolating Russia and is meant to pave the way for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump earlier this month upended U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia by saying he and Putin had agreed to begin negotiations on ending the war.

Ukrainian officials aren’t taking part in the meeting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that his country won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov arrived in the Saudi capital on Monday night. Ushakov said the talks would be “purely bilateral” and would not include Ukrainian officials.

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.

The talks 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, and 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.

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.

Ahead of the talks, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund who the Kremlin said might join the meeting, underscored the importance of the meeting in comments to The Associated Press.

“Good U.S.-Russia relations are very important for the whole world. Only jointly can Russia and the U.S. address lots of world problems, resolve for global conflicts and offer solutions,” Dmitriev, who said he and his team would focus on economic issues at the talks, told AP.

The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya, citing the Russian delegation, described Moscow’s priority as “real normalization with Washington.”

Diriyah Palace sits across the street from Riyadh’s Diplomatic Quarter. It’s also just next to the Ritz Carlton hotel, which became famous in 2017 after de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman detained other princes and the country’s elite there as part of what the royal court called a crackdown on corruption, that also sidelined any potential challenge to his taking control of the kingdom.

Hosting the talks is a major step toward a goal Prince Mohammed has pursued throughout the war — putting the kingdom in the middle of diplomatic negotiations. It has helped in prisoner negotiations and hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an Arab League summit in the kingdom in 2023. Zelenskyy will likely travel to Saudi Arabia later this week.

For Prince Mohammed, once described as a “pariah” by former President Joe Biden over the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, hosting such talks burnish the otherwise-tarnished image the West has for him.

Ahead of the summit, the Saudi daily newspaper Okaz described the moment as the “world’s eye on Riyadh.”

Writing in the London-based but Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al Awsat, journalist Mishari al-Dhaidi described the summit as “a major step on the international political chess arena, revealing the status of Saudi Arabia and its positive influence for the benefit of the people all the people,” he wrote. the neighboring United Arab Emirates, the prince also has maintained close relations to Russia throughout its war on Ukraine, both through the OPEC+ oil cartel and diplomatically as well.

Hosting the summit also balances the harsh criticism recently levied by the kingdom’s tightly controlled media at President Donald Trump over his repeated comments that he wants the U.S. to “own” the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by the Israeli military offensive there since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank for a future state, something backed by the wider Arab world and nearly all of the international community.

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Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Matthew Lee, Baraa Anwer And Dasha Litvinova, The Associated Press