US, Russia Hold Key Talks On Ending Ukraine War, Agree To Set Up High-Level Teams | Takeaways

Last Updated:February 19, 2025, 08:08 IST

Top US and Russian officials held high-level talks in Saudi Arabia, agreeing to work towards ending the Ukraine war and restoring diplomatic ties. Here are the takeaways.

Top officials from Russia and the United States on Tuesday held a high-level engagement that lasted for nearly four hours in Saudi Arabia as US President Donald Trump sought to advance his goal of ending the war in Ukraine and mending ties with Moscow.

The meeting, which came just a week after Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone, was the first substantive face-to-face discussion between the nations’ top diplomats since former Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva in January 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to prevent the Ukraine conflict.

First on both countries’ list of accomplishments was an agreement to end what has been years of dwindling diplomatic relations that hit a post-Cold War low point after Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Neither Ukraine nor European nations were invited to Tuesday’s talks in Riyadh. However, according to US officials, there was no intention to exclude them from peace negotiations should they begin in earnest.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy postponed his plans to visit Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to avoid any linkage of his trip with Tuesday’s US-Russia talks.

TALKS BETWEEN US AND RUSSIAN OFFICIALS: TAKEAWAYS

• Diplomats of both countries said the discussions were a “good first step” and agreed to start working towards ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties.
• They agreed to set up teams to look into restoring staffing at the US and Russian embassies in Moscow and Washington which have been decimated by a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.
• Speaking to the Associated Press, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals — restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and explore closer relations and economic cooperation.
• Rubio said that ending the war in Ukraine could “unlock the door” for “incredible opportunities” to partner with the Russians on issues of common interest “that hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term”.
• Later, Lavrov echoed Rubio’s remarks and told reporters that “the conversation was very useful”. He also said that the sides agreed to fast-track the appointment of new ambassadors and working groups to begin exploring a negotiated end to the conflict.
• As to concessions that may need to be made by all sides, Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who participated in the talks, told AP that the issue of territory and security guarantees would be among the subjects discussed.
• On the key issue of a prospective peacekeeping mission to monitor a potential ceasefire in Ukraine, the top Russian diplomat said Moscow would not accept any troops from NATO members, repeating its assertion that Ukraine’s bid to join the Western military alliance poses a major security issue.

ZELENSKYY RESPONDS TO US-RUSSIA TALKS

In a statement, Zelenskyy slammed his nation’s exclusion from the Riyadh gathering and said his country would not accept any outcome from the talks since Kyiv didn’t take part in the discussions.

He said that any talks aimed at ending the war should be “fair” and involve European countries, including Turkey — which offered to host negotiations.

“This will only be feeding Putin’s appetite,” a Ukrainian senior official told AFP, referring to the launch of talks without Ukraine.

European allies also expressed concerns that they were being sidelined.

TRUMP REITERATES HE WANTS TO END THE ‘SENSELESS’ WAR

Following the meeting, Donald Trump said he wanted to end the war and termed it “senseless”.

“It should have never happened, it would have never happened if I were President,” he said.

“Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the barbarianism that’s going on over there. Soldiers are being killed by thousands on a weekly basis. Apart from Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, a lot of Koreans have been killed,” the US President said.

At a news conference at his Florida residence, Trump reacted to Ukraine’s objections to being excluded from the talks and said, “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you have been there for three years. You should have ended it three years ago.”

“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” he added.

Ties between Russia and the US have fallen to their lowest level in decades in recent years — a rift that has been widening ever since Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and only worsened after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.