U.S. and Russian officials agreed a new four-point plan as they sat down in Riyadh
Donald Trump is the ‘only leader’ who can bring about peace between Russia and Ukraine, his secretary of state Marco Rubio said following four hours of historic talks in Saudi Arabia.
U.S. and Russian officials agreed a new four-point plan as they sat down in Riyadh but whether a full deal can materialize remains to be seen amid questions over Ukraine’s involvement in the negotiation process.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was furious at being cut out of the first meeting and cancelled his own planned visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
Rubio, U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin aide Yuri Ushakov at the lavish Diriyah Palace.
It was the first round of talks as the U.S. looks to broker a peace deal to end the war that has been raging since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
There was no immediate agreement on when Trump and Putin will meet in person to discuss ending the war. The breakthrough talks came after Trump spoke with Putin last week as the U.S. moves away from isolating Russia, but Ukrainian officials were not present for the sit-down in the Middle East.
Rubio said that the U.S. and Russians agreed on four principles during their meeting as they start the initial steps toward a deal.
First, he said the U.S. and Moscow will work to reestablish their respective diplomatic missions in each other’s countries so they can move forward with more communication.
Second, Rubio said the U.S. will appoint a high-level team to help negotiate, and third, they will begin to discuss geopolitical and economic cooperation that could help resolve the conflict.
Fourth, he said that the five people who were involved in the first meeting will remain engaged, so they know it is moving along ‘in a productive way.’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio (center), National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (right) and U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff (left) meeting with senior Russian officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on February 18
Rubio said they would not pre-negotiate and it would involve ‘hard and difficult diplomacy’ over a period of time, but he claimed only Trump could facilitate an end to the war.
‘The only leader in the world who can make this happen, who can even bring people together to begin to talk about it in a serious way is President Trump,’ the secretary of state said.
Rubio also said that ‘in order for the conflict to end, everyone involved in that conflict has to be OK with it.’
He noted it has been more than three years since there was any ‘regularized’ contact between the U.S. and Russia.
Lavrov echoed Rubio’s remarks and said that ‘the conversation was very useful.’
He added: ‘We not only listened, but also heard each other.’
The talks reflected an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy under President Trump.
It appeared to signal a significant easing of restrictions on Russian diplomatic missions in the U.S. that were imposed by previous administrations.
The two countries have expelled diplomats and limited the appointment of new staff at each other’s missions in a series of tit-for-tat measures over the past decade, leaving their respective embassies thinly staffed.
Rubio said those moves had ‘really diminished our ability to operate in Moscow’ and that Russia would say the same about its mission in Washington.
He said: ‘We’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits.’
Waltz, Trump’s National Security Advisor, said the two sides agreed that there needed to be a permanent end to the war and not a temporary pause.
He said there will be discussion of territory as well as security guarantees which will underlie any talks that they have.
However, Waltz would not say whether the U.S. would agree to Russia retaining any Ukrainian territory it had annexed since it invaded three years ago, only that it was to be discussed.
‘What the president did not find acceptable was an endless war in Europe that was literally turning into, has turned into, a meat grinder of people on both sides,’ Waltz said.
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Zelensky Abruptly Cancels Planned Saudi Visit After Being Sidelined From US-Russia Talks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Tuesday he is cancelling his scheduled state visit to Saudi Arabia following the conclusion of US-Russia talks there.
He’s been on a Middle East diplomatic tour to gain support for his country now three years in to the Russia-Ukraine war, which took him to the UAE, Turkey, and Wednesday he was supposed to be in Saudi Arabia to meet with the kingdom’s leadership. The Saudi trip had been planned before it was known that the US-Russia talks would take place.
“Zelensky CANCELLING trip to Saudi Arabia following US/Russia talks. Zelensky will now return to Kyiv from Ankara, Turkey,” Fox News has reported. He now says he plans to visit in March. Zelensky is clearly trying to lash out at Washington.
Without doubt this is to signal his anger about being cut out of talks toward ending the Ukraine war. The Kremlin hailed Tuesday’s four-and-half hour meeting in Riyadh, with Rubio leading the US side and Lavrov leading the Moscow delegation, as “successful”. European officials were also noticeably absent from the meeting, which was hosted and mediated by the Saudi government.
Zelensky had issued a prior warning while in the UAE: “Ukraine will not accept. Ukraine knew nothing about this. And Ukraine regards any negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine as having no results,” he had said.
“Ukraine will not take part in the negotiations. Ukraine did not know they were planned. And the visit to the region was planned long before the US decided to meet Russia there,” he continued.
The fact that a high-level peace meeting was taking place without Zelensky or any Ukrainian representation, at the very moment he was in the region, is being felt as adding insult to injury from the Trump administration.
Top Russian diplomat Sergey Lavrov has explained the need for Zelensky’s absence from talks as follows: “I don’t know what they [Kiev officals] could do at the negotiating table. If their aim is to cunningly extract a deceptive truce while secretly preparing for continued war—true to their habits and nature—then why invite them at all?” according to TASS.
The US and Russian sides have vowed to continue the peace negotiations going, hopefully leading to a face-to-face meeting between Presidents Putin and Trump.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the Riyadh meeting issued a statement revealing an agreement for election to be held in Ukraine, which Zelensky certainly isn’t going to like (and probably won’t agree to), given also he just recently argued that martial law prevents this.
But Putin has said negotiations with Ukraine remain a non-starter so long as Zelensky refuses to hold elections. The Russian leader has said this makes him ‘illegitimate’ and thus he can’t legally sign any peace terms.
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U.S. appeals court blocks Biden SAVE plan for student loans
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s student loan relief plan known as SAVE, a move that will likely lead to higher monthly payments for millions of borrowers.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the seven Republican-led states that filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education’s plan. The states had argued that former President Joe Biden lacked the authority to establish the student loan relief plan.
The GOP states argued that Biden, with SAVE, was essentially trying to find a roundabout way to forgive student debt after the Supreme Court blocked his sweeping debt cancellation plan in June 2023.
SAVE, or the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, came with two key provisions that the lawsuits targeted. It had lower monthly payments than any other federal student loan repayment plan, and it led to quicker debt erasure for those with small balances.
Implementing SAVE could cost as much as $475 billion over a decade, an analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model found. That made it a target for Republicans, who argued that taxpayers should not be asked to subsidize the loan payments of those who have benefited from a higher education.
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