United States and Russian officials have met in Saudi Arabia for the first high-level talks between the two countries since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, along with other senior officials, met on Tuesday morning in Riyadh’s Diriyah Palace. The talks, which discussed the potential for finding path to end the war in Ukraine, involved neither Kyiv nor European representatives.
The absence of Ukrainian or European officials at the talks, which ran for more than four hours, confirmed the shocking shift in US foreign policy under US President Donald Trump, who has suggested that US aid to Ukraine could end and that Kyiv will likely have to cede territory.
Moscow and Washington will be restoring relations on a number of fronts, said Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, after a press briefing by Lavrov following the ministers’ meeting.
The US and Russia will be holding “regular consultations on a number of issues”, said Shapovalova.
From this particular meeting, it was also unclear when talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Trump will occur, she added.
The Kremlin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, earlier on Tuesday told Russian state television that the talks were “serious”.
“We discussed and outlined our principled positions, and agreed that separate teams of negotiators will be in touch on this topic in due course,” he said.
A US statement said that the two countries agreed to address “irritants” in their relations, and to name teams to negotiate “ending the conflict in Ukraine”.
A spokeswoman stressed that the process remains in its early stages, saying: “One phone call followed by one meeting is not sufficient to establish enduring peace.”
Ushakov had earlier also said that a meeting between Trump and Putin was mentioned, but no date has been agreed. A meeting is “unlikely” to take place next week, he noted.
Shapovalova said that while neither the US nor Russia expects a quick breakthrough, “there’s a lot of optimism in the air, as well as scepticism”.
