By Daphne Psaledakis and Pesha Magid
JEDDAH (Reuters) – U.S. and Ukrainian officials were to meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks aimed at mending ties and gauging if Ukraine is willing to make concessions under President Donald Trump’s push to end Russia’s war with Ukraine swiftly.
Washington, Ukraine’s main ally before Trump’s inauguration in January, has upended its policy on the conflict to pursue a rapid end to the fighting. Trump has engaged directly with Moscow, stopped military assistance to Kyiv and paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine, which Russian troops invaded at scale in 2022.
A stunning White House clash last month between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy deeply soured relations.
That left in limbo a minerals deal that Trump framed as key to continued U.S. support and compensation for some $65 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded three years ago.
Under intense U.S. pressure, Zelenskiy has been at pains to show that Kyiv is committed to ending the war, despite failing to win U.S. security guarantees in the minerals accord that Kyiv sees as vital for any peace deal.
“We have to understand the Ukrainian position and just have a general idea of what concessions they’d be willing to make, because you’re not going to get a ceasefire and an end to this war unless both sides make concessions,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday en route to Jeddah.
The top U.S. diplomat will be joined by U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz when they meet with senior Ukrainian officials led by Andriy Yermak, a top Zelenskiy aide. Zelenskiy, who was in Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will not be joining the talks.
Although Rubio was more cautious, Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who has been drafted into Ukraine diplomacy, said he was hopeful the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal would be signed.
Witkoff plans to visit Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin, a person briefed on the plans said on Monday, following a meeting with the Kremlin leader in Russia last month.
CEDING TERRITORY?
Ukraine’s European allies argue that Ukraine can only negotiate a peace deal with Russia from a position of strength and Kyiv should not be rushed to the bargaining table with an aggressor.
Zelenskiy has said that Putin does not want peace and has warned that Russia could attack other European countries if its invasion of Ukraine does not result in a clear defeat.
Rubio declined on Monday to specify concessions each side would have to make but said Kyiv would have difficulty reclaiming all of its lost territory.
“The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it’ll be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014,” he told reporters.
Russia holds around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea which it annexed in 2014, and its troops are pressing on the eastern Donetsk region.
U.S. and Russian officials met in the Saudi capital in February in a rare encounter between the former Cold War foes. The discussions were focused largely on restoring ties after a near-total freeze on official contact under former U.S. President Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Pesha Magid; Writing by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Cynthia Osterman)
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