The United States and Russia will appoint high-level teams to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine and are working to reestablish diplomatic channels, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the end of key talks that excluded Kyiv.
Speaking to reporters after meeting Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Rubio said “concessions” will have to be made by “all sides” in order for the conflict to end. Even the fact that the talks were held at all was a major victory for Russia. The meeting marked the first time top-level US and Russian officials had met face to face since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and they marked a complete reversal of policy from that of the Biden administration.
The US delegation, which included Rubio as well as the US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, suggested that this would be the first in a series of engagements to bring the war to an end. Asked if the US would be willing to accept Russia retaining any of the territory it had annexed from Ukraine since February 2022, Waltz said it was something ”to be discussed.”
“We know just the practical reality is that there is going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees. Those are just fundamental basics that will undergird and underlie any type of discussion,” Waltz said. Following the meeting, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has said he will not accept any deal that is made in Ukraine’s absence.
“I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going well. But today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal,” Trump told reporters in Mar-a-Lago about Ukraine.Neither the US nor the Russian officials gave any indication whether they discussed in detail what, if any, concessions Russia and Ukraine might be willing to make to bring the conflict to an end.
But the Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya outlined Moscow’s key demands ahead of the talks. Many of them will likely be seen in Kyiv as unacceptable. Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Nebenzya said that Russia wants Ukraine to cede control of the entirety of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, saying these places and Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula Russia illegally annexed in 2014, were “irrevocably lost.”
He incorrectly claimed that the regions had “joined the Russian Federation,” referring to referenda that were held by Russian-installed authorities across the occupied areas, widely denounced as shams by Ukraine and its Western allies. According to the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor, Russia currently occupies about 99% of the Luhansk region, 70% of the Donetsk region, and roughly 75% of both the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Nebenzya said that the peace negotiations should “correct” this situation, insisting that Ukraine give up control of the parts of the four regions not under Russian occupation.
Nebenzya also made it clear that Russia wants to force Zelensky out of office. The Russian ambassador called Zelensky “the self-proclaimed Ukrainian president” and referred to his government as “the Zelensky cabal,” saying that neither had “a role to play in the new Ukraine.” Zelensky won the second round of Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election in a landslide. His mandate should have ended last May, but he remains in office because Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia launched its full-scale invasion and martial law prohibits holding elections.
In his comments Tuesday, Trump indicated openness to pushing for new elections in Ukraine. Asked about reports that Russia wants Ukraine to agree to hold elections before any peace deal is agreed upon, Trump said, “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine – where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at four percent approval rating.”
Source: Here
