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The Kremlin said senior US and Russian officials will meet in Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss “restoring all bilateral relations” and setting possible consultations to end the war in Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, spokesman for the Russian president, told reporters on Monday.
The US Secretary of State, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkov will meet the Russian delegation, said Tammy Bruce, a spokesman for the US Department of State. Rubio will meet Saudi officials on Monday ahead of Russia’s talks.
US and Western officials are describing this week’s meeting as logistics and looking to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, aiming for the potential meeting between President Donald Trump and Putin. We are aiming for this.
“Hopefully we’ll make really good progress with the Russian Ukraine,” Witkov told Fox News on Sunday in connection with the story of Riyadh.
Russia has organized a meeting to begin its return from the cold after years of attempts to isolate Western attempts in response to an invasion of Ukraine.
“The president agreed to leave this absolutely ridiculous period in US-Russia relations when he essentially did not speak except for isolated technical and humanitarian issues,” Lavrov wrote on Monday. He said at the press conference. The Russian delegation is “ready to hear” and “react” to its US counterparts, he added.
The rushed consultations were shocked by Ukraine and its European allies. The US has not notified its allies about Trump’s call with Putin, saying Ukraine could take part in a talk at a later date, but it has largely removed them from the process.
Rubio said there was “no process” to put an end to the war, and the team was looking for ways to create it. He said he hopes Ukraine and Europe will eventually get involved in some way.
“If that’s a real negotiation and we’re not there yet, if that happens, Ukraine will have to get involved because Ukraine was invaded. And Europeans are Vladimir Putin and Russia There are sanctions against it, so we’ll have to get involved,” he said of CBS.
Russia has dismissed Europe’s efforts to open a place for peace negotiations and possibly send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
“Their desire to be part of Ukraine’s negotiation process has been satisfied multiple times,” Lavrov said, a failed Minsk led by France and Germany, who brokered a fragile ceasefire after the first Russian infringement in 2014. I mentioned the process.
As long as European countries want to militarily strengthen Ukraine, he added, “I don’t know if there’s anything they’ll do at the negotiation table.”
Peskov said it was “hard to talk” about Ukrainian European peacekeeping forces, as NATO members are involved and “NATO forces will be deployed on Ukrainian territory.”
