U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz participated in the talks
U.S. and Russia end first high-level talks since 2022 as Ukraine peace negotiations in balance
Russian and U.S. officials ended their first formal meeting in years on Tuesday, after more than four hours of laying the groundwork for talks to end the war in Ukraine.
The meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov began earlier Tuesday morning in Saudi Arabia and marked the first formal sit-down meeting between top U.S. and Russian diplomats since January 2022, when then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Lavrov met in Geneva just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.
U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz participated in the talks, while Lavrov was accompanied by Kremlin Aide Yury Ushakov, according to Russian state media.
Ushakov told Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti that separate teams of Russian and U.S. negotiators will begin contact on Ukraine in due time, according to comments translated by NBC News.
U.S. State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement Tuesday that “one phone call followed by one meeting is not sufficient to establish enduring peace. We must take action, and today we took an important step forward.”
Ending the three-year war
The high-profile meeting comes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced last week that he had called Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the leaders had agreed to start negotiations to end the three-year war in Ukraine.
Both sides had played down the potential outcome of this first meeting; State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters on Monday that the Riyadh meeting was designed to “determine if the Russians perhaps are serious, and if they’re on the same page.”
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the meeting was to discuss restoring bilateral relations and “preparations for potential Ukraine peace talks.”
On Tuesday, the spokesman said that Putin was prepared to talk to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “if necessary,” but said that “the legal basis of agreements needs discussion considering the reality that Zelenskyy’s legitimacy can be questioned.”
Russia has downplayed Zelenskyy’s legitimacy due to martial law preventing new elections in the country but Kyiv says it’s impracticable to hold a ballot during wartime.
