US, Russian officials begin meeting in Riyadh

U.S. and Russian diplomats began meeting on Tuesday in Riyadh, journalists said, with talks expected to focus on resetting their fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

The delegations, led by their top diplomats, met at Diriyah Palace in the Saudi capital for the first discussions of this level and format since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Both sides played down the chances that the first high-level meeting between the countries since U.S. President Donald Trump took office would result in a breakthrough.

Still, the very fact the talks were taking place has triggered concern in Ukraine and Europe following the United States' recent overtures towards the Kremlin.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was not invited to the discussions in Riyadh, while European leaders were gathering in Paris for emergency talks on how to respond to the radical pivot by the new U.S. administration.

Preparations for a possible summit between Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin are also expected to be on the agenda.

Trump is pushing for a swift resolution to the three-year conflict in Ukraine, while Russia sees his outreach as a chance to win concessions.

Ukraine feels left out

Zelenskyy said Kyiv "did not know anything about" the talks in Riyadh, according to Ukrainian news agencies, and that it "cannot recognize any things or any agreements about us without us".

He said on social media that any peace deal would need to include "robust and reliable" security guarantees, which France and Britain have called for but not all European powers support.

Russia said ahead of the meeting that Putin and Trump 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 Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the talks would be "primarily devoted to restoring the whole complex of Russian-American relations", alongside discussions on "possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution, and organizing a meeting between the two presidents".

NATO roll back

Moscow, which for years has sought to roll back NATO's presence in Europe, 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.

Before invading 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.

"Europe's the traditional meeting place for the Americans and the Russians, but that's not an option in the current environment," said James Dorsey of the National University of Singapore.

"You either go to Asia or you go to Saudi Arabia," he said.

Moscow heads into the talks boosted by recent gains on the battlefield, while Kyiv also faces the prospect of losing vital U.S. military aid, long criticized by Trump.