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Russia and the US have agreed to “lay the groundwork for future co-operation” on bolstering ties and ending the Ukraine war, after holding the first high-level talks on the conflict since the early months of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Following four-and-a-half hours of negotiations in Riyadh on Tuesday, the US state department said the two sides would appoint “high-level teams” to seek to end the war and establish a diplomatic channel to resolve bilateral issues.
Tammy Bruce, state department spokesperson, said the diplomatic channel would “lay the groundwork for future co-operation 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 talks have sparked fears in Kyiv and in European capitals that US President Donald Trump wants to settle the conflict on Putin’s terms.
“One phone call followed by one meeting is not sufficient to establish enduring peace,” Bruce added. “We must take action, and today we took an important step forward.”
Yuri Ushakov, the Russian president’s foreign policy adviser, told reporters the delegations held “a very serious conversation about all issues”, according to the Tass news agency.
He added that, as well as the channel to restore full bilateral relations, the two sides would appoint separate delegations to discuss Ukraine.
But, in a hardening of its position, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Moscow was “categorically opposed” to a European peacekeeping deployment, ruling out a role for Europe in Ukraine talks and demanding Nato rescind an open-ended 2008 invitation to Kyiv.
The comments came after European leaders clashed at a Paris summit over dispatching peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. While the UK offered to put “boots on the ground”, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain expressed reluctance to do so.
Tuesday’s meeting in Riyadh was the first of its kind between the US and Russia since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In a sight almost unthinkable even a few weeks ago, Russian and American flags flew next to each other outside the opulent palace where the meeting took place.
The talks marked an extraordinary turnaround in just a matter of days after Trump called Putin last week in an effort to end the war — without consulting Ukraine or its European allies.
Kyiv has said it will reject any deal imposed on it without its involvement, while European countries have been left scrambling to claw back a seat at the table.
As Tuesday’s talks took place, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has previously sought to play a brokering role in the conflict.
Ushakov said the Riyadh talks were “not bad” and Russia and the US had “agreed to take each others’ interests into account”, but it was “hard to say” they were “growing closer”.
He added that the US and Russia would work to “create the conditions” for a Trump-Putin meeting, though he said it would probably not take place next week, since “thorough work” was needed first.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and special envoy Steve Witkoff led the US delegation, while its Russian counterpart was made up of Ushakov and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
The US appeared to have given into some of Putin’s core demands before the talks even began after saying Ukraine’s ambitions to join Nato and reclaim territory currently occupied by Russia were not “realistic.”
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