High US and Russian officials were to meet Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the most extensive negotiations between the two countries for at least three years, while President Trump has pushed the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin is looking for links Warm with Washington.
After arriving in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Russian officials said they are looking for “normalization” with the United States, even supporting the possibility that large US oil companies could return to Russia. Ukraine and Europe looked at a distance with a deep apprehension, among the fears that Trump could try to force a peace agreement on Ukraine which would be favorable to Russia.
The meeting comes less than a week after Mr. Trump’s long telephone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Trump later said that the two leaders had spoken of “the great advantage” that the United States and Russia “will one day work together” and that the two leaders had agreed to “start negotiations immediately To end the war in Ukraine.
The American delegation in Riyadh is led by Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State; Michael Waltz, the national security advisor; And Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy of Mr. Trump and a longtime friend of the president. They were to meet on Tuesday with Russian officials, including Sergey V. Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs; Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy advisor to Mr. Putin; And Kirill Dmitriev, head of the sovereign fund of Russia.
Ushakov told journalists after landing in Riyadh that the objective of talks would be “to start a real normalization of the relationship between us and Washington”.
Mr. Dmitriev, who worked with Mr. Witkoff to negotiate the press release last week of an American teacher imprisoned in Russia, said that he would seek to restart economic cooperation with the United States in order to “rebuild communication, reconstructing confidence, rebuilding success ”.
“US oil majors have had very successful business in Russia,” said Dmitriev in a brief interview on Tuesday before the talks, offering an example of how countries could rebuild trade links. “We believe that at some point, they will come back, because why would they give up these opportunities that Russia has given them to have access to Russian natural resources?”
The leaders of Western Oil, including Exxon Mobil, left Russia after the large -scale invasion of Mr. Putin of Ukraine almost three years ago. Energy and economic ties were among the appeal subjects between Mr. Putin and Trump last week, according to Trump and the Kremlin.
Tuesday’s discussions will be the first time since the beginning of 2022 that large delegations of senior American and Russian officials are known for meeting in person. The meeting is another step in Mr. Trump’s attempt to end Russia’s diplomatic isolation that former president Joseph R. Biden Jr. has sought to apply since the start of the invasion – a stage that , according to the Trump administration, is necessary to arrest war.
“If there is going to be the possibility of progress here towards peace, we will have to speak to the Russians,” said Rubio in the CBS program “Face The Nation” on Sunday.
But in Europe and Ukraine, the news of Tuesday scheduled talks was faced with confusion and concern. While Mr. Rubio described the talks as preliminaries, there have been many criticisms in Europe that Mr. Trump’s approach in Russia had not been coordinated with allies of the United States. And Ukrainian officials insisted that they would reject any agreement on their country which has been negotiated without their involvement.
“We cannot recognize any agreement concluded from us without us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Monday.
Mr. Zelensky is also in the Gulf region this week, where several countries have sought to use their relations with Moscow, kyiv and the West to play roles as mediators in the war of Ukraine. Monday, Mr. Zelensky was in the United Arab Emirates to discuss the exchanges of prisoners and the return of Ukrainian children from Russia.
Ukrainian officials have also said that Mr. Zelensky will be in Saudi Arabia this week, but that Ukraine was not invited to the American-Russia talks. Ushakov, Kremlin’s foreign policy advisor, said there was no plan for a three -year -old meeting with the Ukrainians.
“We came here to organize negotiations with American colleagues,” he said.
Andrew E. Kramer contributed Kyiv reports, Ukraine.
