Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Kyiv would not accept any peace agreements made without its participation.
High-stakes talks in Saudi Arabia between US and Russian officials kicked off on Tuesday in a bid to improve ties and start negotiations to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh is the first in-person discussion between top officials from both countries since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov are slated to meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
The meeting comes as US President Donald Trump upended years of foreign policy towards Russia by holding a phone call with Putin last Wednesday and declaring that both had agreed to start negotiations immediately.
A whirlwind week of speeches by US officials followed, in which it emerged that the Washington was seemingly uninterested in Ukraine’s core demands for peace — including its long-held NATO ambitions — and that European leaders would not immediately have a seat at the negotiating table.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Kyiv would not recognise any peace agreement made without its participation.
“We cannot recognise … any agreements about us without us,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine was not made aware of the talks in Riyadh.
Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the meeting would be devoted to the “preparation of possible negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement and the organisation of a meeting between the two presidents.”
Ahead of the talks, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, who the Kremlin said might also join the meeting, said, “Good US-Russia relations are very important for the whole world. Only jointly can Russia and the US address lots of world problems, resolve global conflicts and offer solutions.”
Zelenskyy said he would also be travelling to Saudi Arabia in a video briefing on Monday, although he stressed that his visit was not linked to Russia-US peace talks.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, is also set to visit Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Thursday.
In response to fast-moving negotiations that seemed to be taking place without Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron convened an emergency meeting in Paris on Monday with other European leaders.
After the meeting, they vowed to continue supporting Ukraine but failed to provide concrete security guarantees, including a potential idea to send peacekeeping troops to the front line.
This is a developing story and our journalists are working on further updates.
