United States and Russian officials have met in Saudi Arabia for the first high-level talks between the two countries since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, along with other senior officials, met on Tuesday morning in Riyadh’s Diriyah Palace. The talks, which discussed the potential for finding path to end the war in Ukraine, involved neither Kyiv nor European representatives.
The absence of Ukrainian or European officials at the talks, which ran for more than four hours, confirmed the shocking shift in US foreign policy under US President Donald Trump, who has suggested that US aid to Ukraine could end and that Kyiv will likely have to cede territory.
Moscow and Washington will be restoring relations on a number of fronts, said Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, after a press briefing by Lavrov following the ministers’ meeting.
The US and Russia will be holding “regular consultations on a number of issues”, said Shapovalova.
From this particular meeting, it was also unclear when talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Trump will occur, she added.
The Kremlin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, earlier on Tuesday told Russian state television that the talks were “serious”.
“We discussed and outlined our principled positions, and agreed that separate teams of negotiators will be in touch on this topic in due course,” he said.
A US statement said that the two countries agreed to address “irritants” in their relations, and to name teams to negotiate “ending the conflict in Ukraine”.
A spokeswoman stressed that the process remains in its early stages, saying: “One phone call followed by one meeting is not sufficient to establish enduring peace.”
Ushakov had earlier also said that a meeting between Trump and Putin was mentioned, but no date has been agreed. A meeting is “unlikely” to take place next week, he noted.
Shapovalova said that while neither the US nor Russia expects a quick breakthrough, “there’s a lot of optimism in the air, as well as scepticism”.
Ukraine demands ‘security guarantees’
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had been left in the dark about the talks.
He stated that his country will not accept any agreement reached in its absence and requires “certain security guarantees” from the US and Europe.
“We will never, under any circumstances, recognise our temporarily occupied territories as part of Russia,” he was quoted by Turkish state media as saying. “They are part of Ukraine.”
The Kremlin, for its part, said Putin was serious about negotiating a settlement to end the war and would prefer to do so peacefully.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted, however, that a viable, long-term settlement is impossible without “a comprehensive consideration of security issues” in Europe.
Peskov also acknowledged that Ukraine has the right to join the European Union, but said Moscow has “a completely different position” regarding military alliances, such as NATO.
That means NATO should totally disavow a 2008 promise that Ukraine would be granted membership at some point, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Beyond Ukraine, Russia expects “progress” with the US on economic issues, said Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
“We have a series of proposals, which our colleagues are thinking about. And I think that there will, possibly, be progress in the not-so-distant future, in the next two to three months,” the sovereign wealth fund manager told state TV.
The Russian economy has been stifled since the invasion of Ukraine by sanctions levied by the US and EU.
Russian drone attacks
The talks come as Ukraine steadily loses ground to the larger Russian forces in the grinding three-year war, with concerns that waning US support could push it toward an unfavourable settlement.
Ahead of Tuesday’s discussions, Russian forces launched a barrage of 176 drones at Ukraine, according to Kyiv’s military. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that most of the drones were destroyed or disabled by jamming.
One Russian drone struck a residential building in Dolynska in the Kirovohrad region of Ukraine, wounding 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, according to local officials.