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KYIV — The US and Russia kicked off high-stakes talks Tuesday in Saudi Arabia that they hope will lay the groundwork to end the nearly three-year war in Ukraine.
President Trump has vowed to bring an end to the fighting and force both Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table.
The 4-1/2-hour meeting, which didn’t include Ukrainian officials, was the first time that Washington and Moscow have sat down together to discuss ways to halt the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed, however, that the summit was only the beginning of a conversation that would involve Kyiv and the European Union.
No dates have been set for future talks but there are several critical factors that will need to be discussed when and if negotiations do get under way.
Here is a potential pathway to a peace settlement.
Multilateral peace talks
Peace talks will play an important role in establishing warmer relations.
During the summit hosted by Saudi Arabia, both the US and Russia agreed to restore embassy staffing and re-establish “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow,” Rubio said.
Although the talks did not include Ukraine, Trump’s team has said Kyiv will be a part of future negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday he was “surprised” he wasn’t offered a seat at the Saudi table, and that his country would not accept any deal that it wasn’t physically present for.
However, Rubio insisted that no one was being sidelined and that the European Union would also need to be involved at some point, adding that any solution must be acceptable to all parties.
Trump’s diplomatic team in Saudi Arabia included Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. Russia’s side had Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov and Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev.
No date has been set for future talks but Rubio stressed that Trump wants the discussions to move quickly.
Russia wants to end the war by Victory Day, which is May 9, Ukrainian military officials told The Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Trump has said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet in Saudi Arabia soon, but officials told reporters no date has been scheduled.
Military concessions
Russia has cited the prospect of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — a military alliance of 32 member states — as a justification for its invasion in 2022.
Ukraine has repeatedly urged NATO to invite it to become a member and the alliance has previously said the country will join its ranks once a day — but it has not provided Kyiv a path or timeline on how to get there.
Throughout the war, Zelensky has also demanded NATO membership as the only way to guarantee Russia wouldn’t attack Ukraine in the future.
However, Moscow has said that Kyiv joining the alliance would be a “direct threat” to its sovereignty.
“We explained to our colleagues today what President [Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly stressed: that the expansion of NATO, the absorption of Ukraine by the North Atlantic alliance, is a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation, a direct threat to our sovereignty,” Lavrov said after the Tuesday talks.
The Trump administration — including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — has also said membership is “unrealistic.”
A Ukrainian political analyst and active-duty officer told The Post that they agreed.
“I really understand why this administration goes the way of building bilateral relationships, not working with organizations like the European Union or NATO,” the officer, who did not want to be named, told The Post.
“If [Trump] makes deals directly with Ukraine, it perfectly works with us because working with European democracy is a lot — and from his perspective, it’s much more important, much easier to build this relationship directly with Ukraine.”
Germany has also shown hesitancy to bring Ukraine into NATO when at war, and Politico reported there are at least five more member countries — Belgium, Slovenia, Spain, Hungary and Slovakia — that don’t support Ukraine in the alliance.
Lavrov also said in Riyadh that Moscow would not accept the deployment of other NATO troops there from other countries.
European leaders have discussed how to keep peace in Ukraine by providing peacekeeping troops. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday is “ready and willing” to put British peacekeeping troops in Ukraine.
“So we explained today, the appearance of armed forces from the same countries, albeit under a foreign flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard. This is, of course, unacceptable to us,” Lavrov said at a post-meeting press conference.
Security guarantees
If NATO membership is off the table, Zelensky has argued that Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons to deter Russia from invading again.
The Ukrainian leader pointed out that the country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for assurances of independence from Russia, the US and the UK.
However, Kyiv receiving any nuclear weapons is unlikely, Trump’s Ukraine peace envoy Keith Kellogg told Fox News on Feb. 6.
“The chance of them getting their nuclear weapons back is somewhere between slim and none,” Kellogg said. “Let’s be honest about it, we both know that’s not going to happen.”
Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that any peace negotiations will have to mention security guarantees for Russia, without outlining what they would be.
“Of course, this is a question that is an integral part of the overall topic of settling the Ukrainian conflict. This is one of the elements of this general topic,” he said Monday in a press briefing in Moscow.
Territory
Russia has control over much of the easternmost part of the frontlines, including about 98% of the Luhansk region and the entirety of the Donetsk Oblast, which it has had since 2014.
It also splits control over Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts with Ukraine — with Russia taking the southern portions to create a land bridge connecting the country to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Russia also controls a small portion of territory north of Kharkiv.
Ukraine. meanwhile, has control over roughly 262 square miles of Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Ukraine would like to return to its borders before Russia’s 2014 invasion, which means getting back all Eastern land and Crimea.
Ukrainian military officials told The Post that Ukraine will never recognize its territory as Russian, but they will likely cede control of the land Russia has captured, like what happened in Crimea.
In return, all fighting stops — even in the Donbas region, which has been at war since 2014.
Lavrov dismissed a question on whether Russia would be ready to cede territory back to Ukraine on Monday, claiming that Ukraine canceling the Russian language is unacceptable.
Waltz, speaking to reporters after the Saudi Arabia meeting, said territory and security guarantees will have to be discussed in any official peace talks in the future.
“We know just the practical reality is that there is going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees. Those are just fundamental bases that will, that will undergird and underlie any type of discussion,” the national security adviser said.
Moscow has said it would not exchange Russian territory occupied by Ukraine — Kursk — and instead would push the Ukrainians out militarily.
Pariah state
Another issue to address is economic sanctions on Russia, which have been levied by world powers in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Global businesses also pulled out of Russia and boycotted the country, leaving the Russian economy isolated from the global economy.
Rubio, speaking in Saudi Arabia, told reporters that the sanctions were imposed because of this “conflict” — seemingly implying that the sanctions could be lifted once a deal is reached.
“There are sanctions that were imposed as a result of this conflict,” Rubio said. “In order to bring an end to any conflict, there has to be concessions made by all sides.”
He also said the European Union would also have to be in any negotiations about lifting sanctions. The topic of sanctions wasn’t discussed in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Dmitriev told reporters before the meeting that Russia hoped to reach a deal where sanctions would be lifted and that he would present an estimate to his counterparts showing that the US lost $300 billion by boycotting Russia.
“US oil majors have had very successful business in Russia,” Dmitriev said, according to the New York Times.
“We believe at some point they will be coming back, because why would they forgo these opportunities that Russia gave them to have access to Russian natural resources?”
Other issues
Once a deal is signed, other issues on how to maintain peace and rebuild Ukraine will have to be decided. International partners will also have to contribute to rebuilding Ukraine.
The World Bank estimated in December of 2023 that the total cost of rebuilding in the next decade would be $486 billion.
Trump has not spoken publicly about American guarantees for helping rebuild Ukraine — but has said he wants Ukraine to give billions worth of rare-earth minerals in exchange for continuing US support.
Other issues will also include language changes in Ukraine after a peace deal, as Ukrainians have gone away from the use of Russian, and Russians continue to push for using the language.
With Post wires
