Top Russian and US officials meet for talks on Ukraine war without Kyiv

Top Russian and American officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin talks on improving ties and negotiating an end to thewar in Ukraine.

The meeting at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh marks another pivotal step by the Trump administrationto reverse U.S. policyon isolating Russia and is meant to pave the way for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump earlier this month upended U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia by saying he andPutinhad agreed to begin negotiations on ending the war.

Ukrainian officials aren’t taking part in the meeting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that his country won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov arrived in the Saudi capital on Monday night. Ushakov said the talks would be “purely bilateral” and would not include Ukrainian officials.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

The talks mark a significant expansion of U.S.-Russian contacts nearly three years into a war that has seen ties fall to the lowest level in decades.

Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinkentalked briefly on the sidelines of a G-20meeting in India nearly two years ago, and in the fall of 2022, U.S. and Russian spymasters met in Turkey amid Washington’s concerns that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons amid battlefield setbacks.