The United States and Russia held talks in Saudi Arabia, initiated by US President Donald Trump, which were negatively received by Ukraine and its European allies.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine does not recognize any agreements reached without its participation and is considering alternative options in case of termination of US aid.
- Russia is intensifying its demands to address the “root causes of the conflict,” potentially leading to risky concessions from the United States. European allies remain divided on the issue of active involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, raising concerns about the future of support for Ukraine.
- Ukraine and its European allies openly reacted negatively to the separate talks between Trump and Putin, but they decided to do so anyway. On February 18, a meeting between representatives of the US and Russian presidents ended in Riyadh.
- Kremlin officials have already called the talks between the United States and Russia in Saudi Arabia “good.” However, according to Russians, it is still difficult to say that the positions of Washington and Moscow are converging.
Russia-US talks in Riyadh
The start of the separate talks between the United States and Russia was given by President Donald Trump, who personally called Russian dictator Putin. Then, on February 15, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called and agreed to meet on neutral territory.
Russia and the United States chose Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the venue for the start of separate negotiations. The aggressor state was represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov. The United States was represented by Waltz, Rubio, and Witkoff.
Both sides say that this is only the beginning and that real negotiations are still far away. They should be led by the first persons—Putin and Trump—while the current negotiators should discuss logistics and a roadmap for the upcoming summit between the two presidents.
In this way, the United States may have been trying to get firsthand information and assess Russia’s readiness for negotiations. Earlier, the Americans were scouting the positions of European countries all last week in Europe.
- U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brought to Kyiv a “bondage agreement” on the acquiring of Ukrainian natural resources for literally nothing;
- Vice President J.D. Vance “probed” the resilience and unity of the EU at the Munich Security Conference with notorious claims targeting European democracies;
- Other American figures sent questionnaires to European capitals with direct questions about the readiness of countries to peacefully resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
The culmination should be a visit to Ukraine by Trump’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, who is to visit the front line.
After that, everyone will return to Washington and try to finally develop the so-called “Trump peace plan,” which is nowhere near there, but only pretentious statements claiming to be a Nobel Peace Prize and media spin about peace by Easter.
If Putin attempts to deceive, as everyone anticipates, Trump will resort to “Plan B” and equip Ukraine with all the necessary weapons.
What did the US say after the talks?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States and Russia had agreed to four principles following the talks in Saudi Arabia. According to him, these principles include:
- Restoring the work of the embassies in Washington and Moscow.
- Appointment of a high-level team from the United States to help negotiate and work to end the war in Ukraine in a way that is sustainable and acceptable to all parties involved.
- Begin discussing, analyzing, and exploring both geopolitical and economic cooperation that could end the war.
At the same time, to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Rubio said, it is necessary for all parties to agree to the terms of a peace agreement. He also said that the only leader in the world who can end Russia’s war against Ukraine and “even get people together to start talking about it seriously is President Donald Trump.”
The secretary of state says that the meeting with Russian representatives was “the first step on a long and difficult journey.” He added that “in order to end any conflict, all sides must make concessions,” but it would be wrong to “prejudge them.”
He also hinted at the future role of the EU. “There are other parties that are sanctioned; the European Union will have to come to the table at some point because they are also sanctioned,” Rubio said.
Meanwhile, US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz said after talks with the Russian delegation in Saudi Arabia that there are some fundamental principles that emerged from the conversation. In particular, the end of the war in Ukraine must be final.
“It should be a permanent end to the war, not a temporary one, as we have seen in the past. We understand that from a practical point of view, the issues of territory and security guarantees will be discussed. These are the fundamental foundations that will underlie any negotiations,” Waltz emphasized.
What did Russia say after the talks?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov named three agreements after the talks in Riyadh: According to him, the Russian delegation agreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it is important for countries to be “guided by their national interests.” It is important to “regulate these relations” if the interests of states do not coincide and “not to provoke” military escalation.
“I think the conversation was very useful. We not only listened, but also heard each other. The American side began to better understand our position,” Lavrov said.
The Russian foreign minister named the first task as ensuring the speedy approval of the ambassadors of the two countries. He also called for the “removal of obstacles” in diplomatic activities that “seriously complicated” the work of the Russian and US embassies.
“The second task is the “Ukrainian direction.””. The American side will inform them who will represent Washington in this area,” Lavrov said.
The third agreement is to create conditions “as the crisis in Ukraine is resolved” for the resumption of cooperation between Russia and the United States “in full,” including on “geopolitical issues” in different parts of the world.
Lavrov also emphasized that the Russian and U.S. delegations had reached a mutual understanding on various issues, but that this did not necessarily mean that their positions had converged.
Lavrov commented on reports that the United States and Russia have allegedly developed a three-stage plan to end the war (a Fox News journalist citing sources and a member of the European Parliament reported this on social media X), which includes a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine, and only then a peace agreement.
The Russian foreign minister said that he had not seen such a plan but had seen reports of one that US Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine Keith Kellogg had allegedly presented to Poland. According to him, the American delegation in Riyadh called this plan a fake.
‘A deal with the devil’
This is the scenario that Trump’s team is crafting, and Lavrov is telling media, but there are suspicions that this is not the case. Because it all goes back to the days of the Cold War. It was then that the US was great in Trump’s mind, and the US president was meeting with the chief Moscow communist to decide the fate of the planet.
Putin dreamed of the same thing: the civilized world kept him in quarantine for many years and even issued an arrest warrant, but now everything has changed rapidly, and the Russian dictator is no longer an exile but a respected partner with whom the leader of the world’s most powerful state should meet on an equal footing. The meeting is expected to take place in late February in Saudi Arabia.
And as a great leader of the free world, confident in his power, Trump expects to conclude the world’s best deal that will solve all problems.” But there is reason to believe that this deal will be concluded at the expense of Ukraine and against its interests, as well as those of Europe. Despite being ostentatiously left out of the negotiation process and promised to make a statement on its behalf (Keith Kellogg’s words), Ukraine will actually be left out.
“If they are going to be begging for some disingenuous ideas about freezing the conflict like this, and they themselves, by their nature and habits, mean the continuation of the war, then why invite them there?” Lavrov brutally denied Europe’s subjectivity on the eve of the negotiations with the United States.
Meanwhile, Fox News reported that the United States and Russia are allegedly proposing a three-stage peace plan, which includes a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine, and then a final agreement.
Putin is likely rubbing his hands now, as this is precisely what he desired. It should be recalled that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was preceded by Russia’s December 2021 ultimatum to NATO countries, and in fact to the United States.
Its main condition was not to give up Ukraine to Moscow, but to abandon several waves of NATO expansion and withdraw to the 1997 borders. In fact, it meant the restoration of the former Soviet zone of influence under Stalin, including all of Eastern Europe.
Nowadays, Putin and his representatives are constantly talking about the “need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict” as a prerequisite for negotiations, obviously keeping in mind this imperialist, expansionist whim of the dictator.
And this is exactly what President Trump will have to deal with, forgetting about the massacres of Ukrainian civilians by Russian military invaders in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities, as well as the recent Russian attack on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the “accidental” flight of a Russian war drone over the American embassy in Kyiv on the night of February 17.
Russians are raising the stakes
The mere fact that the US president met with a war criminal isolated from the West should have been a concession for which Putin had to pay something substantial. In fact, Trump’s team personally removed significant leverage points against Russia from the negotiation table.
Instead, the Russians are raising the stakes as much as possible and demanding that their right to the occupied territories of Ukraine and the seizure of land through war be recognized. And it looks like Trump’s team has succumbed to this blackmail.
And two weeks ago, Lavrov compared Trump to Hitler and said that the concepts of “America First” and “Peace Through Strength” have an alarming resonance with Hitler’s slogan “Germany First.” Today, Washington has forgotten all that and is ready to talk on equal terms with a dictator wanted for war crimes. The US has completely lost its reputation in the international stage.
What does Ukraine have to do?
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has already stated that he will not participate in separate negotiations between the United States and Russia, even if he is called there.
“Ukraine will not participate. Ukraine did not know anything about this. And Ukraine considers any negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine as having no results. We cannot recognize any things or agreements about us without us. And we will not recognize such agreements. There is probably a bilateral track there. And the United States has the right to do so if they have bilateral issues. To be honest, they had been talking about this before. Only now have they started talking publicly. Back then, it was like a mauve to talk to the aggressor in times of war,” Zelenskyy said of the separate talks between Russia and the United States.
He also warned that Ukraine would not accept any ultimatums from Moscow. And he announced that he had postponed his visit to Saudi Arabia to March 10 to avoid “coincidences.”
“Any country has a bilateral track with other countries. Please, you can discuss whatever you want, but you cannot make a decision without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine. We were not invited to this meeting; it was a surprise for us, as I think it was for many people. I don’t know who will stay there and who will leave—to be honest, I don’t care. I don’t care if our partners think something unnecessary about us,” Zelenskyy said.
“Ukraine will not consider the decisions made there to be binding. But the problem is that Ukraine was never planned to be invited there, and the worst thing is that it looks like both the United States and Russia are convinced that they are “binding.””
Ukraine faces the need to consider the scenario of discontinued US military aid and explore alternative options. The fact that talks are underway about backup options is evidenced by the meetings of European leaders in Paris, as well as Kyiv’s talks with China and Turkey.
On February 24, EU leaders will arrive in Kyiv to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It is expected that a powerful joint statement on future actions will be adopted. However, predicting the extent of further EU military support and the speed of new deliveries is challenging.
