Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — Senior officials from Russia and the U.S. met in Saudi Arabia Tuesday to begin talks on improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine., some felt the Trump administration had granted Vladimir Putin some degree of victory just by agreeing to hold the high-level meeting with his regime as the war he ignited with his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
That sentiment may be felt most acutely by the leaders of Ukraine, who were not invited to participate in the initial discussion about the fate of their nation.
Delegations led by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met behind closed doors at the Dariyah Palace in Riyadh. The meeting marked another significant step in President Trump’s move to reverse three years of U.S. policy focused on isolating Russia over its war on Ukraine, and it is meant to pave the way for a likely meeting between Mr. Trump and Putin.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the U.S. and Russian delegations had agreed to establish a “consultation mechanism to address irritants to our bilateral relationship,” and Rubio told reporters that would include a re-staffing of the two nations’ respective embassies.
Bruce said Rubio and Lavrov had agreed to appoint “high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.” Rubio said the respective embassies in Washington and Moscow would need to be re-staffed, as “we’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits.”
Neither Bruce’s statement nor a full read-out on the meeting provided by the State Department said anything about involving Ukraine or its European neighbors in the negotiations. The State Department said only that Mr. Trump was, “the only leader in the world who can get Ukraine and Russia to agree to” a ceasefire.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that his country wouldn’t accept the outcome of any negotiations conducted without Kyiv’s involvement. Zelensky, has he posted to X. He added that the pair “coordinated our next steps”.
“We cannot allow Putin to deceive everyone again. Before any potential negotiations, all partners must clearly understand that strong security guarantees are the priority for lasting peace, Zelensky said that after he was informed about Rutte’s meeting with US envoy Keith Kellogg, “the key messages align with our goal of achieving guaranteed peace, not just a temporary ceasefire”.
“There must be confidence that in a few months or years, Putin won’t return with his war.”
The economic aspect of the discussions
Dmitriev was quoted as saying by the ahead of the talks in Riyadh. “The figure that we are voicing for the first time now is that American business has lost more than $300 billion by leaving the Russian market,” he said, apparently referring to the impact of sanctions imposed on Russia under former President Biden.
“Finding joint economic paths, positive solutions to issues, is extremely important, mainly for the U.S. and for many other countries that are beginning to understand that the Russian market is extremely attractive and that it is necessary to be present in it,” he said, adding that he hoped for “a positive dialogue.”
Trump escalated his comments a by calling Zelensky a “dictator” – he had previously claimed that the Ukrainian leader was down to 4% approval rating among His comments followed a statement from Zelensky, who said Trump is living in a “disinformation space” fueled by Russia. The exchange sparked reactions from world leaders, with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz calling Trump’s comments “false and dangerous”. Speaking to reporters earlier, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said he would meet his US counterpart “with pleasure” but added that such a meeting would have to be well prepared.
All my experience and 30 years of negotiations with the Russians show that you can be successful in talking to them only from the position of strength,” former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin says. “The best position of strength would be to have us, the US and Europe on the same side, with a clear definition of what we want to achieve,” he adds. Mykola Bielieskov of the National Institute for Strategic Studies points out that it sends a bad signal when Ukraine and Europe are not included in the peace talks.
“Transatlantic unity is one of the major leverages to pressure Russia. And if there is no unity, there is less readiness for Russia to pursue deals that would be in the interest of Ukraine and Europe,” he says.
“If Ukraine loses the war, it won’t be only Ukrainian failure. It would be failure of Europe, with all the negative consequences. It would be failure of the US,” Bielieskov warns.
Ukraine needs to continue developing its army and “try to wake Europe up”, says Mykhailo Samus of the New Geopolitics Research Network in Ukraine. “Europe should finally understand that the US won’t protect Europe against any threats and challenges anymore. And only Europe, including Ukraine, is capable to protect itself and to create guarantees not only for Ukraine but for Europe.”
U.S.-Russia peace negotiations include discussions on withdrawing from or not deploying U.S. troops in countries that joined NATO after 1990
Romania already voted massively for an anti-Nato candidate in an election that was later cancelled – there may well be more anti Nato sentiment among other Eastern European countries, as we have recently seen in NATO is on the verge of collapse If the rumors that the German newspaper BILD published, and a similar announcement was made by the Financial Times, that the United States is ready to withdraw from NATO member states that joined after 1990, which includes the Baltics, are true, NATO can officially be declared dead.
NATO was formed and operated with one goal, to stop the influence and threat from the Soviet Union and later Russia. NATO gradually expanded towards Russia, absorbing country after country. The conflict happened, Russia won and the existence of NATO, which is 70% on the back of the United States, no longer has a purpose, at least not for the US.
It may survive, but not as we knew it until now, it is possible to rebrand itself as some European military organization.