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Russia and the United States have agreed to “lay the foundations for future cooperation” on the strengthening of links and the end of the Ukraine War, after having held the first high-level talks on the conflict since the first month of the invasion of Vladimir Putin.
After four and a half hours of negotiations in Riyadh on Tuesday, the US State Department said that the two parties would name “high -level teams” to try to end the war and establish a diplomatic channel to solve bilateral problems .
“It must be a permanent end for war and not a temporary end as we have seen in the past,” said US National Security Councilor Mike Waltz.
“The practical reality is that there will be a discussion on the territory and that there will be a discussion on security guarantees, these are only fundamental bases,” he added, noting that the President Donald Trump was “determined to move very quickly”.
The State Department has declared that the new diplomatic channel “would launch the basics of future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and economic and historical investment possibilities which will emerge from a successful term in the conflict in Ukraine” .
Russia said the two parties would also appoint separate delegations to discuss Ukraine.
Asked what Moscow concessions would make, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that such a step would result from “difficult and difficult diplomacy” in “closed rooms over a period of time”.
He added: “No one is sidelined here.”
Riyadh talks have aroused fears in kyiv and in the European capitals that Trump wants to settle the conflict according to Putin’s conditions and Tuesday, the Kremlin seemed to harden his position.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Moscow was “categorically opposed” to a European deployment of peacekeeping, excluding a role for Europe in Ukrainian talents and demanding that NATO cancel an open invitation of 2008 to kyiv .
European leaders had previously faced themselves at a Paris summit to send peace forces to Ukraine. While the United Kingdom proposed to put “boots on the ground”, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain have expressed their reluctance to do so.
Waltz said the United States was doing a “shuttle diplomacy” and consulted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron, while Trump will meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer next week.
He added that he had rejected the “notion that our allies were not consulted”.
Tuesday’s meeting in Riyadh was the first of its kind between the United States and Russia since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in Moscow. In sight, a few weeks ago, Russian and American flags stolen next to each other outside the opulent palace where the meeting took place.
The talks marked an extraordinary turnaround in a few days after Trump called Putin last week in order to end the war – without consulting Ukraine or its European allies.
Kyiv said that she would reject any agreement imposed on her without her involvement, while European countries have been left to postpone a seat at the table.
While Tuesday’s talks took place, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has already sought to play a brokerage role in the conflict.
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s Russian in foreign policy, said Riyadh talks were “not bad” and that Russia and the United States had “agreed to take others”, but it was ” Difficult to say “that they” approached the other “, but it was” difficult to say “that they” approached the other “”.
He added that the United States and Russia would endeavor to “create the conditions” for a meeting of Trump-Putin, although he said that it would probably not take place next week, because a “work in -depth ”was necessary first.
The United States seemed to have given up some of the basic requests from Putin even before the talks begin after having declared that Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO and to recover the territory currently occupied by Russia were not “Realistic”.
