American and Russian officials to meet in Saudi Arabia

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High American and Russian officials will meet in Riyadh on Tuesday, in what Kremlin characterized as an effort to establish conversations to end war in Ukraine and discuss “restore all bilateral relations.”

The administration of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and the special envoy Steve Witkoff would meet with the Russian delegation in the Saudi capital. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said that kyiv “will not participate” in the conversations and “knew nothing about it.”

Speaking of the United Arab Emirates, Zelenskyy added: “Ukraine considers any negotiation on Ukraine without Ukraine as those who have no result, and we cannot recognize. . . Any agreement on us without us. ”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy advisor, will lead the Moscow delegation to Riad, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian president, journalists told Monday.

Russia is framing the meeting as the beginning of its return from the cold after years of Western attempts to isolate it in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

“The presidents agreed to leave behind this absolutely ridiculous period in relations between the United States and Russia when they did not speak essentially, except the technical and humanitarian problems isolated,” said Lavrov on Monday.

American and Western officials have described this week’s meetings as logistics and aimed at a possible meeting between Trump and Putin and ending the Ukraine War.

“Hopefully, we will really advance well with respect to Russia-Ukraine,” Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday, referring to Riad’s conversations.

The convened conversations have been alarmed to Ukraine and their European allies. The United States did not inform its allies of Trump’s call with Putin in advance and has left them largely outside the process, although he has said that Ukraine can join the conversations on a later date.

President Rece Tayyip Erdogan of Türkiye, who has tried to play an intermediate role in the conflict in the past, has invited Zelenskyy to visit Ankara on Tuesday.

Rubio said that “there was no process” yet to end the war, and that the team was exploring ways to create one. He said he hoped to involve Ukraine and Europe eventually in some way.

“If it is real negotiations, and we are not there yet, but if that happened, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they are the ones that were invaded. And Europeans will have to participate because they also have sanctions to Putin and Russia, ”he said in CBS.

Russia dismissed European efforts to forge a place in peace conversations and possibly send a peace maintenance contingent to Ukraine.

“His desire to be part of the Ukraine negotiation process has been fulfilled more than once,” said Lavrov, referring to the failed process of Minsk, directed by France and Germany, which negotiated a fragile in the fire after the initial invasion of Russia in 2014.

While European countries want to strengthen Ukraine militarily, “I don’t know if there is something to do at the negotiating table,” he added.

Peskov said it was “difficult to speak” of a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine because it would involve NATO members and “NATO troops will be deployed in the Ukrainian territory.”

The United Kingdom Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer offered to put the British “boots” on the field “in Ukraine, before a summit with other European leaders on Monday.