State Secretary Marco Rubio met Saudi Arabian officials on Monday for planned conversations in the country between diplomats of the United States and their Russian counterparts intended to negotiate the Ukraine war.
Rubio was accompanied by the American national security adviser Michael Waltz and Steve Witkoff, the special envoy from the US to the Middle East, in a meeting with Saudi crown prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman in his palace in the capital Riyadh. Rubio also met Saudi Arabia Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud earlier after trip to Riyad from Israel His first trip to the Middle East As a State Secretary.
Conversations are planned For Tuesday in Saudi Arabia between the US and Russia. Van Ukrainian officials are remarkably expected to be absent in the negotiating table.
Rubio, Waltz and Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, said spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tammy Bruce.
On 17 February 2025, State Secretary Marco Rubio met Saudi -Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty images)
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s Foreign Advisor Yuri Ushakov left for the Saudi capital on Monday, according to the Russian state of TV.
Lavrov turned to reporters in Moscow on Monday and said that he looked forward to placing an “absolutely abnormal period” of alienation between the US and Russia behind them, according to the Washington Post.
“We want to listen to our partners,” said Lavrov.
Spokesperson for Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said that the conversations will primarily be aimed at “restoring the entire range of American Russian relations, and preparing possible conversations about the Ukrainian settlement and organizing a meeting of the two presidents. ”
Bruce said that the meeting is aimed at determining how serious the Russians are about wanting peace and whether detailed negotiations can be started.
The Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud receives state minister Marco Rubio at the head office of Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh on February 17, 2025. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty images)
“I think the goal is of course to determine whether this is something that can move forward,” she told reporters who travel with Rubio in Riyad, according to the Associated Press.
Bruce said that although Ukraine would not be at the table for Tuesday’s conversations, the actual peace negotiations would only take place with the involvement of Ukraine.
Tuesday’s conversations are expected to lay the foundation for the top between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said he spoke with Putin on the phone last week and they agreed to start our respective teams immediately. ” The call years of American policy, with which the insulation of Moscow was terminated during his 24 February 2022, invasion of Ukraine. Trump called Zenskyy afterwards to inform him about their conversation.
Trump On Sunday, reporters told that Zenskyy will be “involved” but did not work.
In the meantime, French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for an emergency meeting between the most important European powers in Paris on Monday to discuss the conflict of Russia-Ukkraine.
Speaking of the “Sunday morning Futures” of Fox News, Witkoff said that he and Waltz “will have meetings in the direction of the president” and hope “what really good progress with regard to Russia-Ukraine.”
Witkoff did not respond directly to a question whether Ukraine should give up a “considerable part” of his territory as part of a negotiated scheme. Defense secretary Pete Hegseeth said last week that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested that Kiev should give up hope to recover all his territory from Russia.
The Ukrainian president said on Monday that his country was not invited to the coming conversations and will not accept the outcome if KYIV does not participate. The US-Russian conversations would ‘not produce results’, given the absence of Ukrainian officials, Zelenskyy said at a conference call with journalists from the United Arab Emirates, according to the AP. Zenskyy said he would travel to Turkey on Monday and to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, but that his journey was not related to the US and Russia conversations.
Rubio meets Saudi -Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyad on February 17, 2025. On a separate bank, Waltz and the American affairs Alison Dilworth. Witkoff, not shown, was on another bank in the room. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty images)
In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday”, Waltz rejected the idea that European allies are not being consulted about the negotiation of the war in Russia-Ukraine, and noticed how Rubio, Hegseeth, vice-president JD Vance and Treasury- Secretary Scott Bessent spent the meeting with allies in Europe last week. Especially berry traveled to Kiev, while Vance met the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zensky on the sidelines of the Munich Safety Conference.
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Waltz said that one of the most important tenants would be a peace agreement to “guarantee a permanent end of the war” in which it describes how the conflict was transferred “in a meat mill of people in the First World War.” He said that long-term military security guarantees should be led through Europe, and criticizes how a third of NATO countries do not contribute to what they agreed ten years ago.
With regard to the billions in the American help sent to Ukraine during the BIDEN administration, Waltz said that the American people “deserve to be recovered, it deserves to have a sort of payback time for the billions they are in these have invested war. ”
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
