Kremlin and Washington confirm a high level meeting on Tuesday on peace talks and the restoration of relations.
The United States and Russia have confirmed that their best delegates will meet to discuss the end of the war in Ukraine.
High officials will go to Saudi Arabia on Monday, confirmed the US State Department and Kremlin. They will meet in Riyadh on Tuesday with the intention of laying the basics of peace talks, the two parties said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, President Policy Advisor Vladimir Putin, was to travel, said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
They will meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and the special envoy in the Middle East Steve Witkoff, said the State Department.
Peskov said the meeting “will devote himself to possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution and to the organization of a meeting between the two presidents”.
Following information that US President Donald Trump could meet Putin in Saudi Arabia, the Republican chief said this weekend that such a meeting could occur “very soon”.
The reuters news agency, citing Peskov, reported that the meeting on Tuesday will focus on “the restoration of the entire Russian-American relations complex”.
The head of the sovereign fund of Russia, Kirill Dmitriev, would also have joined Reunion.
Rubio said on Sunday that Tuesday’s meeting is trying to open a wider conversation that “would include Ukraine and imply the end of the war”.
“A process towards peace is not one thing at a meeting,” he told the American television network CBS.
Alarm
As the talks in Riyadh were confirmed, European leaders had to meet in Paris to discuss their response to the change of Washington shocking policy on Ukraine, who saw kyiv and his European allies sidelined.
Trump announced that he intended to speak directly about “peace in Ukraine” with Putin, who sparked a large -scale invasion of his neighbor three years ago. US officials have confirmed during the weekend that they do not expect Europe to be involved.
This has made the alarm that the American president could present concessions to Russia and European security architecture and to his defense partnership with the United States.
Peskov suggested that Moscow is satisfied with Trump’s approach, declaring that discussions on European participation in talks on a regulation in Ukraine would be premature.
Lavrov then pointed out that he could not see any reason for Europeans to participate in cease-fire talks, accusing them of wanting to “continue the war” in Ukraine.
“I don’t know what they would do at the negotiating table … if they want to sit at the negotiating table in order to continue the war, then why invite them there?” He declared a press conference in Moscow.
Before the informal summit in France, the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jose Manuel Albares, said that European leaders will discuss the way of preventing a peace negotiation from rewarding the Russian assault.
“A war of aggression cannot be rewarded. We cannot encourage others to launch Wars of Aggression, “he said in an interview at the radio station Onda Cero. “Today, I am convinced that Putin will continue to attack and bomb Ukraine, so I don’t see peace on the horizon for the moment.”
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Kaja Kallas security policy warned Trump last week against “any agreement behind” the backs of Ukraine or Europe and accused it of ” appeasement ”.
