Ukraine war: Who is attending Russia and US peace talks?
Top US and Russian officials are set to meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday with the aim of restoring ties and setting up negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has said the discussions in Riyadh could pave the way for a face-to-face meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin “very soon”.
It comes after the pair held a ground-breaking lengthy phone call last Wednesday.
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Riyadh, which is also involved in talks with Washington over the future of the Gaza Strip, has played a role in early contacts between the Trump administration.
But who will be involved in the discussions tomorrow?
Marco Rubio after arriving in Riyadh. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump’s secretary of state, who arrived in Riyadh on Monday, serves as the president’s chief foreign affairs adviser and the country’s top diplomat.
Mr Rubio, a former Florida senator, already spoke to Russian foreign affairs minister Sergey Lavrov over the phone on Saturday, discussing the war in Ukraine and other topics, according to readouts of the call from both countries.
The US president and Mr Rubio were adversaries when they both ran to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2016, launching public insults at one another.
But over the past few years Mr Rubio has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Mr Trump’s views, particularly on foreign policy – so much so that he was one of three final contenders for Mr Trump’s vice-presidential pick for this term, eventually losing out to JD Vance.
Before he was made secretary of state, the 53-year-old said Ukraine needed to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all territory that Russia has taken in the last decade.
“I’m not on Russia’s side – but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” he said in September.
Michael Waltz
Michael Waltz at the Republican National Convention last year. Pic: Reuters
US national security adviser Michael Waltz will be alongside Mr Rubio during the US-Russia talks.
The 51-year-old is a Green Beret veteran who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa.
Since 2019, he has represented a congressional district in the House, where he’s a member of the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees.
Before his appointment in Mr Trump’s cabinet, he co-wrote an article in The Economist that laid out his view of how the US could move to convince Russia to end the war: either by offering to ease sanctions or threatening greater assistance to Kyiv.
“America can use economic leverage, including lifting the pause on exports of liquefied natural gas and cracking down on Russia’s illicit oil sales, to bring Mr Putin to the table,” he wrote in the 2 November piece, co-authored with Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon strategist.
“If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use. Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.”
He said that he didn’t want Moscow to be able to declare its actions in Ukraine a victory.
Instead, he wrote that requiring Mr Putin to accept a deal whereby Ukraine remains an independent state, closely tied to the West “would be a strategic defeat for the Russian leader and seen as such in Beijing”.
Steve Witkoff
Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff (left): Pic: Reuters
Mr Witkoff, Mr Trump’s special Middle East envoy, is a long-time friend of the president’s and a fellow billionaire real estate developer.
The 67-year-old, who has known Mr Trump for decades, is a Republican donor and served on one of the president’s Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like Mr Trump, he made his fortune in real estate in both New York and Florida, and brought family members – his wife, Lauren, and sons Alex and Zach – into the Witkoff Group.
He is regularly seen bonding with Mr Trump on the golf course, and was present on the course in Florida during the apparent assassination attempt on the president last September.
Mr Witkoff has been busy in his new Middle East role, having been Mr Trump’s man in the room for the extremely fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations.
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, he confirmed he was heading to Riyadh, adding: “And hopefully we’ll make some really good progress.”
Sergei Lavrov
Sergei Lavrov at a meeting in Moscow. Pic: Reuters
Sergei Lavrov is Russia’s longstanding foreign minister, having taken the role back in 2004.
The highly decorated Kremlin official has been described as “the Jedi master of the dark arts of Russian diplomacy” by Sky News’ international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn.
He said Mr Lavrov is “a diplomatic bruiser who cajoles and bullies where he sees fit” who has been known, like others at the Kremlin, to make outlandish claims about the reality of the war.
Initially, when rumours of a Russian invasion sparked, he said it would never happen – then once it began, he for some time insisted that it hadn’t.
The 74-year-old made headlines when he unintentionally made the audience at an international conference in India laugh in March 2023 by attempting to portray his country as the victim of the war in Ukraine.
“The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using Ukrainian people, of course, influenced the policy of Russia, including energy policy,” he said to a chorus of laughs and groans.
Yuri Ushakov
Yuri Ushakov. Pic: AP
Mr Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov will join Mr Lavrov or the Russian side of the table.
Americans will be familiar with the Kremlin official, as he served as the Ambassador of Russia to the United States from 1998 until 2008 before taking up his current post in 2012.
What exactly is the meeting for?
Specifically, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the meeting would focus on restoring US-Russia relations and setting up talks for a potential Ukraine peace deal.
The talks will be among the first high-level in-person discussions in years between Russian and US officials and are meant to precede a meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin.
Mr Rubio has said the coming weeks and days would determine whether Mr Putin is serious about making peace.
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Keith Kellogg, Mr Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, is not expected to attend the meeting, as he is at NATO’s HQ in Brussels, but he has been working with Mr Trump on a plan to broker a war-ending deal with Russia.
They have offered scant details about such a plan, nor any timescale for its implementation.
This meeting comes off the back of Mr Trump’s phone call with Mr Putin last week.
Writing about the call on Truth Social, the US president said: “As we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.
“We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.”
Ukraine and Europe are not invited
The US and Russia have excluded Ukraine and Europe from the meeting, as tensions grow between America and European countries.
It’s prompted European leaders to put together their own impromptu talks in Paris, with Sir Keir Starmer saying: “We cannot allow any divisions in the alliance to distract from the external enemies we face.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed his country has been left out of the talks in Saudi Arabia, saying any negotiations without them will have “no result”.
“And we cannot acknowledge anything, any arrangements about us, that were made without us. And we will not recognise such agreements,” he told reporters on Monday.
Speaking to Sky News’ US partner network NBC News, Ukraine’s president thanked Donald Trump for his support, but added there is not “any leader in the world who can really make a deal with Vladimir Putin without us”.
Asked whether he believed Mr Trump was negotiating in good faith, Mr Zelenskyy said: “I hope so. I hope so. Yes, I count on it.
“I trust Trump because he’s the president of the US, because your people voted for him and I respect their choice.”
In an interview on CBS News on Sunday, Mr Rubio moved to reassure Europe and Ukraine that they would be part of negotiations further down the line if they were to materialise.
He said: “If it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet, but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved because they’re the one that were invaded, and the Europeans will have to be involved because… they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well, and they’ve contributed to this effort.”
It’s beginning to feel like “Midnight Sun” diplomacy.
In parts of Alaska, the sun doesn’t set in summer, casting light through the night but leaving you disorientated.
Ukraine latest: Zelenskyy reject’s Putin’s proposal
The Trump-Putin summit is pitched as “transparent” but it’s difficult to find any path to peace right now.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has reduced it to a “listening exercise” where Donald Trump will seek a “better understanding” of the situation.
There isn’t much to understand – Russia wants territory, Ukraine isn’t ceding it – but Ms Levitt rejects talk of them “tempering expectations”.
It’s possible to be both hopeful and measured, she says, because Mr Trump wants peace but is only meeting one side on Friday.
It’s the fact that he’s only meeting Vladimir Putin that concerns European leaders, who fear Ukraine could be side-lined by any Trump-Putin pact.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims Mr Putin wants the rest of Donetsk and, in effect, the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
He’s ruled out surrendering that because it would rob him of key defence lines and leave Kyiv vulnerable to future offensives.
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‘Steps have been taken to remedy the situation’ in Pokrovsk
European leaders – including Sir Keir Starmer – will hold online talks with Mr Zelenskyy twice on Wednesday, on either side of a virtual call with Mr Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.
Their concerns may be getting through, hence the White House now framing the summit as a cautious fact-finding exercise and nothing more.
The only thing we really learned from the latest news conference is that the first Trump-Putin meeting in six years will be in Anchorage.
Alaska itself, with its history and geography, is a layered metaphor: a place the Russians sold to the US in the 1800s.
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Russian traditional nesting dolls with images of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at a gift shop in Moscow. Pic: Reuters
A remote but strategic frontier where the lines of ownership and the rules of negotiation are once again being sketched out.
On a clear day, you can see Russia from Alaska, but without Mr Zelenskyy in the room, it’s difficult to see them conquering any summit.
In the place where the sun never sets, the deal might never start.
Donald Trump has said he would try to return territory to Ukraine as he prepares to meet Vladimir Putin and lay the groundwork for a deal to bring an end to the war.
“Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” the US president said at a White House news conference ahead of Friday’s summit in Alaska.
Mr Trump also said: “There’ll be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody, to the good of Ukraine.”
He said he’s going to see what Mr Putin “has in mind” to end the three-and-a-half-year full-scale invasion.
Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House. Pic: Reuters
And he said if it’s a “fair deal,” he will share it with European and NATO leaders, as well as Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who have been liaising closely with Washington ahead of the meeting.
Asked if Mr Zelenskyy was invited to the summit with Mr Putin in Alaska, Mr Trump said the Ukrainian leader “wasn’t a part of it”.
“I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings. You know, he’s been there for three and a half years – nothing happened,” Mr Trump added.
The US president said Mr Putin wants to get the war “over with” and “get involved” in possible talks but acknowledged Moscow’s attacks haven’t stopped.
“I’ve said that a few times and I’ve been disappointed because I’d have a great call with him and then missiles would be lobbed into Kyiv or some other place,” he said.
Mr Trump said he will tell Mr Putin “you’ve got to end this war, you’ve got to end it,” but that “it’s not up to me” to make a deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin is set to meet Donald Trump in Alaska. Pic: Reuters
Zelenskyy says Russia ‘wants to buy time’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia “wants to buy time, not end the war”.
“It is obvious that the Russians simply want to buy time, not end the war,” he wrote in a post on X, after a phone call with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Pic: Reuters
“The situation on the battlefield and Russia’s wicked strikes on civilian infrastructure and ordinary people prove this clearly.”
Mr Zelenskyy said the two “agreed that no decisions concerning Ukraine’s future and the security of our people can be made without Ukraine’s participation”, just as “there can be no decisions without clear security guarantees”.
Sanctions against Russia must remain in force and be “constantly strengthened,” he added.
European leaders meet ahead of call with Trump
Meanwhile, European officials have been holding meetings ahead of a phone call with Mr Trump on Wednesday.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has been speaking to foreign ministers virtually, saying on X that work “on more sanctions against Russia, more military support for Ukraine and more support for Ukraine’s budgetary needs and accession process to join the EU” is under way.
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‘Russians want to carry on fighting’
Over the weekend, European leaders released a joint statement, welcoming Mr Trump’s “work to stop the killing in Ukraine”.
“We are convinced that only an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war can succeed,” read the statement.
It was signed by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“We underline our unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity,” they said.
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Attacks continue
Despite Donald Trump’s efforts to convince Vladimir Putin to commit to a ceasefire and negotiations, Russian attacks on Ukraine have only intensified in the past few months.
Ukraine’s president has said that, in the past week, Russia launched more than 1,000 air bombs, nearly 1,400 drones and multiple missile strikes on Ukraine.
On 9 July, Russia carried out its largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, launching more than 740 drones and missiles, breaking its records from previous weeks.
Furthermore, Mr Zelenskyy has said Russia is preparing for new offensives.
And then there were two.
It will be a Trump-Putin bilateral summit in Alaska.
Ukraine latest: Trump details talks with Putin
The US president has ruled out a trilateral meeting including Volodymyr Zelenskyy and is framing the talks as low stakes.
He described it as a “feel out” meeting “to see what the parameters” are, and stressed “it’s not up to me to make a deal.”
A strategic preemption perhaps, setting expectations low, and preparing the public for failure.
But he remains wedded to the notion that “land swapping” will shape any deal to end the war in Ukraine.
“Good stuff” and “bad stuff” for both sides, he said, positioning himself as the pragmatic mediator between the two.
He expressed irritation with Mr Zelenskyy’s assertion that he doesn’t have the constitutional power to concede land, though did say he hopes to get “prime territory” back for Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be attending the summit. Pic: AP
The dealmaker-in-chief
Mr Trump promised to brief the Ukrainian president and European leaders immediately after his meeting with Mr Putin.
And he voiced confidence in his ability to quickly assess the potential for a deal, boasting his business acumen.
“At the end of the meeting, probably the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made,” he said.
Asked how he would know, he replied: “That’s what I do, make deals.”
Members of his cabinet nodded in approval.
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Putin ‘wants war to be over’
A law-and-order crackdown in the US capital seems timed to bolster his diplomatic stance.
He branded crime in Washington “a national emergency”, took federal control of police and deployed the National Guard.
It may seem strange that Mr Trump is talking about “taking back” Washington, ahead of a rare summit with Mr Putin.
But he’s positioning himself as bold and uncompromising before he faces a man deemed bold and uncompromising.
A telling gaffe
And he conflated the two, saying: “This is a tragic emergency, and I’m going to see Putin, I’m going to Russia on Friday.”
He isn’t going to Russia. He’s going to Alaska. But that gaffe revealed how central Mr Putin is to his narrative, even domestically.
Vladimir Putin has been reluctant to meet his Ukrainian counterpart. Pic: Sputnik/Reuters
Mr Putin wants to lock in the gains Russia has made since invading Ukraine, while Mr Trump presses for a ceasefire.
But it’s hard to envisage any ice-breaking peace deal emerging from Friday’s summit in Alaska.
How could there be when Mr Zelenskyy is out in the cold?
For now, this is a Trump-Putin power play.
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