US and Russian officials have started talks in Riyadh about the war in Ukraine, amid fears in Kyiv and in European capitals that Donald Trump wants to settle the conflict on Vladimir Putin’s terms.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, began the meeting with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser.
The talks in the Saudi capital are the first high-level effort to broker an end to Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since its early stages almost three years ago, when negotiations fell apart amid the Russian president’s intractable demands.