Ukrainian president says no decision on how to end Russia’s war on his country can be made without consulting Kyiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has renewed a demand that Kyiv be included in any talks on how to end Russia’s war on Ukraine after the United States and Russia agreed to create a team to negotiate a halt to the fighting.
Ukraine was not represented at the talks between the US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on Tuesday.
“We want no one to decide anything behind our backs … No decision can be made without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine,” Zelenskyy told reporters during a visit to Turkiye, where he held talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He added that he had been due to travel to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, but has now postponed his trip to Riyadh until March 10 as he did not want “any coincidences”.
The meeting in Riyadh marked the first time that US and Russian officials have met to discuss ways to halt the fighting that escalated with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible”, the US State Department said.
Washington added the sides had also agreed to “establish a consultation mechanism” to address “irritants” to the US-Russia relationship, noting the sides would lay the groundwork for future cooperation.
US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told reporters in Riyadh that the war must come to a permanent end, and this would involve negotiations over territory.
“Just a practical reality is that there is going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees,” he said.
Russia hardens demands
But while the meeting in the Saudi capital was under way, Russia hardened its demands.
The Kremlin said that Ukraine had the “right” to join the European Union, but not the NATO military alliance.
Ukraine has consistently demanded NATO membership as the only way to guarantee Kyiv’s sovereignty and independence from its nuclear-armed neighbour.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow that NATO must also go further by disavowing a promise it made at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 that Kyiv would join at a future, unspecified date.
“Otherwise, this problem will continue to poison the atmosphere on the European continent,” she said.
Rubio addresses European concerns
Before the talks took place, the new administration of US President Donald Trump was accused by some European politicians of handing free concessions to Moscow last week by ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine and saying it was an illusion for Kyiv to believe it could win back the 20 percent of its territory now under Russian control.
European leaders held an emergency meeting in Paris on Monday trying to present a united front, on a war they have responded to with heavy sanctions on Russia.
Addressing Ukrainian and European concerns, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on Tuesday that no one was being sidelined and said: “The European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point, because they have sanctions [on Russia] as well that have been imposed.”
Zelenskyy said that to ensure a just peace, the US, Ukraine, and Europe should participate in the talks on security guarantees for Kyiv.
Turkish President Erdogan offered Turkiye as the “ideal host” for any talks on ending the war, recalling how the sides had met in Istanbul back in 2022, just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Turkiye will be an ideal host for the possible talks between Russia, Ukraine and America in the near future,” he added, saying the Istanbul talks had been “an important reference point and the platform where the parties came closest to an agreement”.
The talks in Riyadh come as fierce fighting rages on along more than 1,000km (620 miles) of front line, with Russian troops slowly but steadily advancing in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine has also seized control of a small part of Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise attack launched across the border in August 2024.
