U.S., Russia hold first talks on Ukraine without NATO allies, Kyiv

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – President Donald Trump on Tuesday blamed Kyiv for starting the war between Russia and Ukraine as his top aides concluded initial talks in Saudi Arabia on ending the conflict that included Russia but excluded Ukrainian and European officials.

The remarks came amid complaints from U.S. allies about Trump’s handling of the diplomacy, which ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and acknowledged that Kyiv would have to make concessions on territory while leaving several European leaders in the dark.

Ukraine “should have never started it,” Trump told reporters. “. . . I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s discussions with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the first such high-level U.S.-Russian meeting since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, yielded an agreement to form negotiating teams and held out the possibility of “historic economic and investment opportunities” for Russia if the conflict is brought to a successful end.

Rubio, who was joined by national security adviser Michael Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, said that Trump’s goal was to achieve a deal that was “fair, enduring, sustainable and acceptable to all parties involved.”

“Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey but an important one,” he told reporters after the talks.

But U.S. officials did not specify what role the Ukrainian government, which was not invited to the 4½ hours of meetings at a cavernous royal palace in the Saudi capital, would play in future negotiations.

The Riyadh talks have deeply unsettled Ukraine, where fears are mounting that U.S. officials are overly comfortable discussing the country’s future without Kyiv at the table. They have also unnerved European allies, who worry that without their input Trump will embrace a deal that emboldens Russian President Vladimir Putin just as Washington appears poised to withdraw its security umbrella from the continent.

Trump downplayed the significance of Kyiv’s exclusion and underscored that if Ukraine wanted a seat at the table, it could have opened peace negotiations at any time in the last three years.

“Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years: You should have ended it,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

Ukrainian officials have bristled at the notion that anyone is responsible for the war’s continuation other than Putin, who launched the full-scale invasion in 2022. The fighting is responsible for having killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of people.

Trump’s aides, meanwhile, depicted the meeting as a means to explore prospects for later, more inclusive negotiations and to pave the way for an expected Trump-Putin summit.

It marked a sharp break with the “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” mantra embraced by President Joe Biden and his Western allies.

Russian officials appeared focused chiefly on steps to improve U.S.-Russian ties and end Moscow’s period of isolation during the war. Where they addressed the war, they reiterated the Kremlin’s long-standing demands and appeared to stake out new ones.

“I have reason to believe that the American side has become more aware of our position,” Lavrov told Russian media. “Russia and the U.S. have agreed that when their interests do not coincide, they need to solve problems rather than provoke conflict.”

In a sign of Kyiv’s displeasure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a last-minute decision to postpone a visit to Saudi Arabia scheduled for Wednesday. He said it was crucial that negotiations “do not take place behind the backs of key players affected by the consequences of Russian aggression” – namely Ukraine and Europe.

“For the war to end with a reliable and lasting peace, no mistakes must be allowed,” he said in a message posted on Telegram. “This is possible only when negotiations are fair, and guarantees are developed with the participation of all those who are truly capable of providing them.”

One Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation candidly, said that Trump administration officials “haven’t told us what they wanted to talk about, and we have no perspective on what Ukrainian interests they want to trade.”

The discussions come just days after Trump’s top aides shocked European leaders by ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine and declaring that Kyiv must give up on recovering all Russian-controlled territory. Trump, alone among the vast majority of NATO leaders, has long voiced positive views about Putin; the men had a lengthy call last week.

Nearly three years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion, Russia controls roughly a fifth of Ukraine. While the pace of Russian gains has increased in recent weeks, Kyiv maintains a foothold in southwestern Russia. The war has also taken a major toll on Russia’s economy and its military.

Moscow, seeking to cement new partnerships and avoid widening enlistment at home, signed a military agreement with Pyongyang, resulting in the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to battle Ukrainians in Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukrainian officials have warned that unless a peace deal includes strong Western guarantees, Russia will regroup and launch a new assault. A 2014 peace deal brokered by Germany and France, which aimed to reintegrate areas of eastern Ukraine led by Russian-controlled separatist forces, was never fully implemented.

European nations are now discussing sending troops to Ukraine if a deal can be reached, but no commitments have been made.

Rubio declined to say whether any of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and its allies following Putin’s invasion would be lifted, but said all sides would need to make concessions. He denied any party was being sidelined and said there would be “engagement and consultation” with Ukraine and European nations if peace talks take off. To that end, Rubio briefed his counterparts from France, Britain, Germany and Italy, and the European Union foreign minister after Tuesday’s talks, the State Department said.

U.S. officials noted that Washington has spoken extensively with Ukraine but hasn’t engaged deeply with Russia in three years. “If you’re going to bring both sides together, you have to talk to both sides,” Waltz said.

Waltz said Trump remains determined to “move very quickly” and that future talks would determine whether Russia would be able to retain territory it occupies.

“What the president did not find acceptable was an endless war in Europe that was literally turning into – has turned into – a meat-grinder of people,” he added.

While the Trump administration depicted Tuesday’s meeting as a first step in a potential broader peace effort, Russian officials characterized it as a chance to end a period of punishing economic and political isolation, and achieve more functional relations with the world’s other nuclear superpower.

“The main thing is to begin a real normalization of relations between us and Washington,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Tuesday as he arrived in Riyadh as part of the Russian delegation.

A State Department statement said the officials agreed on a consultation mechanism “to address irritants” in their ties with the goal of restoring the normal functioning of the countries’ respective embassies, which U.S. officials said would be necessary for talks to succeed.

⁠They also agreed to pave the way “for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and historic economic and investment opportunities which will emerge from a successful end to the conflict in Ukraine,” the State Department said.

Amid European fears of a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the continent, the Kremlin reasserted on Tuesday its demands to renegotiate NATO’s security architecture in Europe as a requirement for a deal to stop the fighting in Ukraine.

Lavrov said Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO – which for a long time has been a stated, though distant, goal of Ukraine and alliance nations – remained unacceptable to Russia, as was placing NATO troops on Ukrainian soil, suggesting Moscow has not budged from its longtime demands.

But Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, speaking in Moscow, appeared to introduce a new one: She said that NATO must not only refuse Ukraine entry but also disavow a 2008 statement that opened the door to its future membership.

While a majority of NATO members support the concept of Ukrainian accession, they disagree on how quickly that could occur. But until Trump’s return to office, Washington’s official position was strongly in support of that move.

Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser to the Russian Central Bank and an expert at the Carnegie Center, said that Russia has already gained by breaking the freeze on high-level diplomatic contacts.

“Now, despite the fact that drones and missiles keep flying, high-ranking U.S. officials are sitting down and talking with Russians,” she said. “That’s already a big win for Putin because there is no Ukraine or Europe at the table.”

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said that Moscow has made proposals to Washington for new business and energy cooperation, voicing optimism that deals could be concluded within months.

“The whole world is watching whether the U.S. and Russia manage to improve relations,” Dmitriev said, according to Interfax. It “will help accomplish a large number of global tasks and problems facing the world today. … We also see that economic cooperation is important.”

Renewed business collaboration would be a major departure from the Biden era, when the United States led Western nations in imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia and sought to weaken Moscow economically.

The venue in Saudi Arabia is also a sign of changing U.S. foreign policy priorities. While Biden dealt awkwardly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom U.S. intelligence officials blamed in the killing of a Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor in Turkey in 2018, Trump held a call with Mohammed three days after retaking office.