OAN Staff Blake Wolf
12:17 PM – Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Senior U.S. and Russian officials began talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin negotiating the end to the war in Ukraine.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff were in attendance for the peace talks on behalf of President Donald Trump and the United States.
Rubio stated that the two sides agreed to restore diplomatic and economic relations between the two countries even after the end of the war, while also creating high-level teams dedicated to ongoing peace talks.
“I would start by saying we’ve agreed on four principles that I think are important. First is that we are going to work – we’re going to point our teams’ respectively to work very quickly to reestablish the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and in Moscow. For us to be able to continue to move down this road, we need to have diplomatic facilities that are operating and functioning normally,” Rubio stated.
“The second point is that we’re going to appoint a high-level team from our end to help negotiate and walk – work through the end of the conflict in Ukraine in a way that’s enduring and acceptable to all the parties engaged,” he continued. “The third point is to begin to work at a high level as well to begin to discuss and think about and examine both the geopolitical and economic cooperation that could result from an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Obviously, we have to see that conflict come to a successful and enduring end in order for that to be possible.”
The four-and-a-half hour meeting did not include any Ukrainian officials.
Meanwhile, Kirill Dmitriev, one of the Russian negotiators and the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, stated that the meeting was overall “positive,” although it was too early in the talks to discuss specific agreements.
Dmitriev was joined by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as well as by Fremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov.
“We see that President Trump is very actively solving a large number of problems in the world and we hope that the Russian Federation’s position will be heard very clearly and the dialogue will continue,” Dmitriev stated. He added that “Finding joint economic paths, positive solutions to issues, is extremely important, mainly for the U.S. and for many other countries that are beginning to understand that the Russian market is extremely attractive and that it is necessary to be present in.”
The meeting marked the first time since the war began that U.S. and Russian officials have sat down together in collaboration efforts to end the nearly three-year war in Ukraine, as the Biden administration previously cut all official contact with Russian officials following the start of the war.
Russian officials have long stated that Ukrainian entry into NATO is “unacceptable” to Russia, which President Trump has agreed with, stating that he doesn’t see Ukrainian entry into NATO as “realistic.”
Additionally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Monday that Kyiv would not be bound by any agreement the United States and Russia made without a Ukrainian representative present, adding that he was “surprised” he wasn’t invited.
Zelensky has also previously stated that he would accept a deal that includes NATO membership, or the acquisition of nuclear weapons to deter future Russian aggression.
Special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is expected to travel to Ukraine later this week to speak with Ukrainian leaders regarding their potential concessions and perspective to see an end to the war in Ukraine.
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