Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting the countries' fractured relations and possibly paving the way to ending the Ukraine war.
Kyiv said it was not invited to the discussions in Riyadh, while European leaders -- reeling from Washington's dramatic change in policy towards Moscow -- hosted an emergency security summit in Paris.
The meeting should not be seen as a "negotiation" on Ukraine, a US State Department spokesperson said ahead of talks between the two countries in Riyadh on Tuesday.
"I don't think that people should view this as something that is about details or moving forward in some kind of a negotiation," Tammy Bruce said on Monday, adding US President Trump had tasked officials to "follow up effectively" on a Wednesday call he held with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The meeting in Saudi Arabia will be the first between senior representatives of Russia and the United States since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Preparations for a possible summit between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are set to be on the agenda.
Trump is pushing for a swift resolution to the three-year conflict, while Moscow sees his diplomatic outreach as a chance to gain concessions on some of its long-standing gripes about Washington's military presence in Europe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv "did not know anything about" the talks in Riyadh, according to Ukrainian news agencies, and that it "cannot recognise any things or any agreements about us without us".
Moscow said ahead of the meeting that Trump and Putin wanted to move on from "abnormal relations" and that it saw no place for Europeans to be at any negotiating table.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov will meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
Possible Trump-Putin summit
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the talks would be "primarily devoted to restoring the whole complex of Russian-American relations", as well as "possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution, and organising a meeting between the two presidents".
The Russian negotiators were also ready to discuss the Middle East, he added.
Moscow has made clear it wants to hold bilateral talks with the United States on a plethora of broad security issues, not just a possible Ukraine ceasefire.
Russia has for years sought to roll back NATO's presence in central and eastern Europe.
Before invading Ukraine in February 2022, Putin was demanding the military alliance pull its troops, equipment and bases out of several eastern members that were under Moscow's sphere of influence during the Cold War.
The prospects of any talks leading to an agreement to halt the Ukraine fighting are unclear.
Both Kyiv and Moscow have ruled out territorial concessions and Putin last year demanded Ukraine withdraw its troops from even more territory.
Zelensky will travel to Turkey on Tuesday to discuss the conflict with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and then Saudi Arabia a day later.
He does not plan to hold talks with either the US or Russian delegations, his spokesman said Monday.
Zelensky said last week he was prepared to meet Putin, but only after Kyiv and its allies had a common position on ending the war.
'Why invite them?'
Russia's Lavrov said Monday he saw no point in other European countries taking part in any Ukraine talks.
"I don't know what they would do at the negotiating table... if they are going to sit at the negotiating table with the aim of continuing war, then why invite them there?," he told a press conference in Moscow.
Germany on Monday tentatively welcomed the talks.
"That there is direct contact between the Americans and the Russians is not a bad thing if it is about finding a way to a durable and lasting peace," said a foreign ministry spokesman in Berlin.
European leaders were due to convene in Paris for an emergency summit on "the situation in Ukraine" and "security in Europe", the French presidency said.
Trump has called on Europe to play a bigger role in Ukraine's defence, but there are divisions over how to best support Kyiv, including over the idea of a troop deployment.
The UK and France are among those that appear open to sending a peacekeeping contingent, while Germany said Monday it was "premature" and Poland said it had no plans to do so.
Battlefield gains
Moscow heads into the talks boosted by recent gains on the battlefield.
Its better resourced troops are pushing Ukraine back across the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line.
Kyiv also faces the prospect of losing vital US military aid, long criticised by Trump.
Russia's army on Monday said its forces had captured a small settlement in northeastern Ukraine and also retaken control of a village in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock counter-offensive last August.
With AFP
Comments