Senior officials from Russia and the U.S. met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday (February 18, 2025) to begin talks on improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.
Delegations led by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh. The meeting marks another pivotal step by the Trump administration to reverse the US. 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.
Mr. Trump earlier this month upended U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia by saying he and Mr. 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 (February 17, 2025) that his country won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part.
Mr. Rubio was accompanied by U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, while Lavrov sat next to the Kremlin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov. Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan and National Security Adviser Musaed al Alban joined Mr. Rubio, Mr. Lavrov and others for the start of the meeting but were expected to leave early in the talks.
Mr. Ushakov said on Monday (February 17, 2025) the talks would be “purely bilateral” and would not include Ukrainian officials.
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.
Mr. 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 Turkiye 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 favourable to them.
France called an emergency meeting of European Union countries and the U.K. on Monday (February 17, 2025) to decide how to respond.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday (February 18, 2025) said he spoke by phone to Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the meeting.
“We seek a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Mr. Macron wrote on X. “To achieve this, Russia must end its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians,” he said and vowed to “work on this together with all Europeans, Americans, and Ukrainians.”
Ahead of the talks, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund who the Kremlin said might join the talks, underscored the importance of the meeting in comments to The Associated Press.
“Good US-Russia relations are very important for the whole world. Only jointly can Russia and the US address lots of world problems, resolve for global conflicts and offer solutions,” Mr. 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 normalisation 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, which 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. Mr. 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 neighbouring 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 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 October 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.
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 Kirovohrad region, injuring 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.
Published – February 18, 2025 02:28 pm IST
