Marco Rubio arrives in Saudi Arabia for decisive Russia-Ukraine peace talks
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives in Saudi Arabia on Monday ahead of expected talks with Russian officials aimed at ending the nearly three-year conflict with Ukraine.
The talks come after President Donald Trump last week spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone and ordered top officials to begin negotiations on the war, which he repeatedly vowed to end during his presidential campaign.
Rubio, who spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday, will meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia alongside Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz and White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a US lawmaker and a source told Reuters. It was not immediately clear who they would meet from Russia.
The talks will be among the first high-level in-person discussions in years between Russian and US officials and are meant to precede a meeting between the US and Russian presidents.
“We are moving along we are trying to get a peace with Russia-Ukraine. We are working very hard on it,” Trump told reporters on Sunday after saying that he spoke to Secretary Rubio about the negotiations in Saudi Arabia.
In an interview that aired on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Rubio said the U.S. president “will know very quickly” whether peace conversations with Russia “are a real thing or whether this is an effort to buy time.”
“I don’t want to foreclose the opportunity to end a conflict that’s already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and continues every single day to be increasingly a war of attrition on both sides,” Rubio said.
It remains unclear, however, to what extent Ukrainian or European officials will be represented in the discussions expected to take place in Riyadh in the coming days. The official said the United States sees negotiations as early-stage and fluid, and who ultimately ends up at the table could change.
In his exchange with reporters, Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “will be involved” in the negotiations, yet offered no further explanation.
The developments come after comments by top Trump advisers this past week, including Vice President JD Vance, raised new concerns in Kyiv and other European capitals that the Republican administration is intent on a quick resolution to the conflict with minimum input from Europe.
“Decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” Zelenskyy said in an address Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. “From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that.”
Heather Conley, a deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Europe during Republican President George W. Bush’s administration, said that with Trump’s current approach to Moscow, the U.S. appears to be “seeking to create a new international approach based on a modern-day concert of great powers.”
“As in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it is only for the great powers to decide the fate of nations and to take—either by purchase or force—that which strengthens the great powers’ economic and security interests,” Conley said. “Each of these powers posit claims or coerce countries in their respective regional spheres of influence.”
The anticipated Saudi talks also come amid tension over Trump’s push to get the Ukrainians to agree to give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s deposits of rare earth minerals in exchange for some $66 billion in military aid that Washington has provided Kyiv since the start of the conflict, as well as future defense assistance.
On the one hand, Zelenskyy directed Ukraine’s minister to not sign off, at least for now, saying in an interview that the deal as presented by the U.S. was too focused on American interests and did not include security guarantees for Ukraine.
The White House, on the other hand, called Zelenskyy’s decision “short-sighted,” arguing that the deal would strengthen Ukraine’s ties with the United States.
