US and Ukrainian delegations are expected to meet today for another round of talks in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed in a post on X.
That will be followed by a meeting between US and Russian representatives Monday, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
The meetings come after last week’s dizzying developments in President Donald Trump’s Ukraine war diplomacy, which saw Russian President Vladimir Putin refuse to sign up for Trump’s proposal of a 30-day ceasefire with the country he launched a full-scale invasion against in 2022.
Putin did agree to temporarily halt attacks on energy and infrastructure targets in Ukraine, the White House said, while Zelensky agreed to pause attacks on Russian energy targets.
That pledge from the two leaders fell well short of the broader US-proposed ceasefire deal that Ukraine agreed to earlier this month, and the specifics are still murky.
The big picture: The Trump administration has departed from decades of US foreign policy in the way it has pursued a deal to end Russia’s war, leaving Kyiv and traditional European allies reeling.
In a sprawling podcast interview with right-wing host Tucker Carlson, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said the status of Crimea and the four mainland Ukrainian regions currently occupied by Russia are the “elephant in the room” for peace talks.
Kyiv vehemently opposes giving up the territories, which were illegally annexed by Moscow, but Witkoff echoed the Kremlin’s argument that people living in the territories want to split from Ukraine.
“They’re Russian-speaking,” Witkoff said of the four eastern regions. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”
CNN has previously reported that voting in the regions was essentially carried out at gunpoint, with one resident saying the results were a foregone conclusion.
