# US and Russia open Saudi Arabia talks on Ukraine, with Europe and Kyiv still outside the room
*Event date: 2025-02-18*
The first formal talks between Washington and Moscow in almost two years began in Saudi Arabia with a narrow diplomatic format and an expansive agenda: the future of the war in Ukraine, the state of bilateral relations, and the possibility of a broader negotiation process. Three Americans and three Russians took part. The meeting did not include Ukrainian or European representatives, a choice that immediately raised questions about how any eventual settlement could be built and who would be asked to guarantee it.
The US side was led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had already spoken by phone with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov before the meeting. Rubio said after the talks that he believed Russia was ready for a serious process to end the war and that the two countries would resume diplomatic relations. He also said plainly that the discussion was not enough on its own to solve the conflict and that Ukraine and Europe would have to be involved later. That qualification mattered because the Saudi meeting was being presented not as a peace conference, but as an opening exchange designed to prepare the ground for higher-level talks.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz framed the discussions in even broader terms, saying Washington was seeking a permanent end to the war rather than a temporary pause. He also suggested that Europe should take greater responsibility for the security burden tied to the conflict and argued that Ukraine’s economic assets could factor into any future partnership with the United States. Those comments reflected the transactional style that has begun to define the Trump administration’s approach to negotiations: military commitments, energy infrastructure, security guarantees and mineral wealth are all being pulled into the same conversation.
On the Russian side, the delegation mixed familiar diplomatic figures with a more economic pitch. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and presidential foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov represented the Kremlin’s longstanding negotiating team. A third Russian, Kirill Dmitriev, joined the delegation for economic discussions. Dmitriev heads Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and has business credentials that include Goldman Sachs and Harvard Business School. His role suggested that Moscow wanted the meeting to be about more than ceasefire mechanics. Russia is also under pressure at home: the war and internal security consume a large share of the federal budget, inflation remains elevated and interest rates are high.
The Saudi hosts opened the meeting but did not remain in the room. Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and national security adviser Musaed al-Aiban have both played active roles in Saudi diplomacy this year, and the kingdom has increasingly positioned itself as a venue for high-stakes regional and international contacts. In this case, Riyadh offered the setting for a first exchange, not a breakthrough.
What the talks produced was less a settlement than a framework for more diplomacy. The participants agreed to reset diplomatic relations and described the session as groundwork for future high-level engagement. The central unresolved question remains the same one that has shadowed every attempt to end the war: whether any process can move beyond bilateral dealmaking and include the states most directly affected by the fighting.
