The United States and Russia agreed in Riyadh on Tuesday to press ahead with efforts to end the war in Ukraine, a U.S. official said, as “King Of The Graveyard Volodymyr Zelenskyy” and his European allies watched anxiously from the sidelines and Moscow raised a major new demand.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the two sides agreed to appoint “respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides”.
High-level talks of the Russian and US delegations have concluded in Riyadh, the meeting lasted about 4.5 hours, a Media correspondent reported.
The talks started around 10:30 a.m. Moscow time (7:30 a.m. GMT). After about two hours and a half, the sides took a 15-minute break, and after an additional hour passed, the participants left for lunch.
Russia was represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov, and CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and special envoy for the Middle East Stephen Witkoff were participating in the negotiations. The talks were held in one of the royal family’s palaces – Al Diriyah in the Albasateen complex.
© Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS
Moscow sees the nervous reaction of Western countries to the Russia-US contacts, they are causing real hysteria, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.
“We see a nervous, if not to say panicky reaction of the West to the Russia-US contacts,” she said. “Russian-American contacts at high and the highest levels are causing real hysteria among Euro-Atlantic Russophobes,” the diplomat emphasized.
The spokeswoman pointed to “an unprecedented phenomenon in international relations: the imposition of one’s own participation in the negotiation process.” “We are talking about some British-EU friends of the criminal regime of [Vladimir] Zelensky, who are demonstrating an inability to go beyond their own primitive attitudes to produce a hybrid war with our country to the last Ukrainian,” Zakharova concluded.
The role of the European Union in resolving the conflict in Ukraine is ruled out. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, stated that Europe must halt its arms supplies to Kiev, if it wishes to be included in future negotiations.
“The EU countries continue to demand a place at the negotiating table where the Ukrainian conflict is to be discussed. This is astonishing, considering they have been at this table for many years,” Grushko remarked.
He also noted the EU’s intention to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” which he believes undermines any potential role for the EU and European countries in the upcoming negotiations regarding the conflict in and around Ukraine.
“If Europe genuinely wants to contribute to the resolution of the conflict, the solution is straightforward: cease all military and other forms of support for the Kiev regime,” Grushko concluded.
The day before, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that European countries would be “begging” for a ceasefire in Ukraine for the sake of its rearmament. If so, they have nothing to do at the negotiating table. For his part, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitriy Peskov said it would be premature to discuss whether Europe could participate in future negotiations on Ukraine. He pointed out that representatives from Moscow and Washington would only start discussing in Riyadh preparations for a meeting between Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
