Zelenskyy has accused the US of ending Moscow’s isolation as the US and Russia discuss to end Ukraine war and revive ties.
Top diplomats from the United States and Russia met in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday to discuss how to end the Ukraine war and reestablish tattered diplomatic ties between the two powers.
The talks marked the first high-level communication between Washington and Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after which their bilateral ties have descended to an historic low.
Here are the key takeaways from the Riyadh talks, and what we can expect next:
Russia and the United States have agreed to form a high-level team to negotiate a settlement to the war in Ukraine that triggered what analysts said was a new cold war that pitted Moscow against the US and its NATO allies in Europe.
The US was represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, while Russia was represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was accompanied by Moscow’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov.
After the meeting, Rubio told the AP news agency that both Russia and the US will form high-level teams, delegated with the task of supporting Ukraine peace talks.
Rubio added that ending the war in Ukraine could open the US and Russia up to opportunities to partner up on areas of mutual interest, which “hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term”.
Both sides have said they would continue talks moving forward, as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was left in the cold. Zelenskyy has said that he would not accept any deal imposed on his country, which lost nearly 20 percent of its territory to Russia.
“Russia wants to do something,” Trump said in Florida. He brushed aside Ukraine’s concern about being left out of the meeting and said Kyiv should have entered talks much earlier.
“I think I have the power to end this war,” he said.
At the talks held in Riyadh’s Diriyah Palace, the two sides agreed to mend diplomatic and economic ties that had particularly worsened after the Ukraine war erupted nearly three years ago.
Lavrov said that the two sides agreed to fast-track the appointment of new ambassadors, adding that senior diplomats from the two countries will meet shortly to discuss specifics related to “lifting artificial barriers to the work of the US and Russian embassies and other missions.”
Both countries have expelled each other’s diplomats and the US and its Western allies have slapped a host of economic sanctions on Russia. The diplomatic rift between the US and Russia widened after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
US and Russia to establish negotiating teams to end the war
Bringing an end to the conflict cannot happen “unless we have at least some normalcy in the way our diplomatic missions operate in Moscow and in Washington, DC”, Rubio emphasised.
The US and its allies imposed at least 21,692 sanctions on Russia since the 2022 invasion. Many US companies pulled out as the Biden administration pushed to isolate Russia globally.
Kirill Dmitriev, chief of Moscow wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said that it is expected that “a number of American companies to return to the Russian market in the second quarter of 2025,” according to state-owned Russian news agency TASS on Wednesday.
Dmitriev told the Reuters news agency that these American companies lost $324bn as a result.
Representatives from Ukraine and Washington’s NATO allies were absent from the negotiating table, with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy on Wednesday rejecting any concessions to Russia.
Both Rubio as well as Lavrov, however, have said “concessions” have to be made by “all sides” to bring an end to the conflict.
On the day US diplomats were engaged in face-to-face talks with their Russian counterparts, Zelenskyy landed in Ankara to speak to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia came as a surprise to us, just as it did to many others. To be honest, I don’t really care. What matters to me is that our partners take time to think about us,” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday during a news conference.
Referring to Ukraine’s concerns about being left out of the talks, Trump said on Tuesday: “Well, you’ve been there for three years, you should have ended it.”
Trump appeared to question Zelenskyy’s legitimacy as a leader as he demanded Ukraine should hold elections. The US president claimed that Zelenskyy has an approval rating of merely 4 percent, without backing it with evidence.
At a news conference in Kyiv on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that Trump was “living in a disinformation space” created by Russia.
European leaders, who see Russia as their biggest security threat, have also expressed their concerns as they feel sidelined by Trump’s outreach to Moscow.
Rubio on Tuesday said there would be “engagement and consultation with Ukraine, with our partners in Europe and others. But ultimately, the Russian side will be indispensable to this effort.”
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