U.S. and Ukrainian officials are convening in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, marking the first time the two parties will meet since the spectacular Oval Office spat between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy in late February.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the American delegation, which includes special envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. The Ukrainian team will be led by Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak.
Zelenskyy will not be involved in the meeting, although he traveled to Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has assumed a central role in bringing the U.S., Ukraine and Russia together to look for an end to three years of war in Ukraine.
The Tuesday meeting has been billed as a “high-stakes” encounter, given heightened tensions between Washington and Kyiv that prompted the U.S. to cut all military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv, putting its battlefield forces under more pressure.
The gathering, the U.S. has said, is designed to see how serious Ukraine is about making concessions to end the war, although the compromises the U.S. has in mind — such as ceding occupied territory to Russia and forgetting any future NATO membership — are bitter pills for Kyiv to swallow.
Rubio, who also met the Saudi crown prince separately on Monday, reiterated at the time that Kyiv would need to accept Russian control of some of its territory as part of a wider peace deal. Russia occupies around 20% of Ukraine currently. Kyiv has said it needs security guarantees as part of any peace deal in order to deter future Russian aggression, but the U.S. has so far refused to offer these reassurances.
“The important point in this meeting is to establish clearly their [Ukraine’s] intentions, their desire, as they’ve said publicly now numerous times, to reach a point where peace is possible. And then we’ll have to determine how far they are from the Russian position, which we don’t know yet either,” Rubio told reporters in Jeddah on Monday.
“Once you understand where both sides truly are, it gives you a sense of how big the divide is and how hard it’s going to be. So I’m hoping it’ll be a positive interaction along those lines,” he said.
“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things, to end this conflict or at least pause it in some way, shape, or form,” he said.
Ceasefire proposal
Ukraine is keen to look as open-minded as possible, given its increasingly vulnerable position both on and off the battlefield. It is reportedly ready to table the idea of a partial ceasefire that would see aerial and naval attacks halted, although ground combat would continue.
“Ukraine’s position in these talks will be fully constructive,” Zelenskyy said on X Monday, while his right-hand man Yermak commented Tuesday morning that “the team is onsite. Getting ready to work. Protecting Ukrainian interests, a clear vision of ending the war, we will work effectively with our American partners,” he said in comments posted on Telegram and translated by NBC News.
Ukraine has been scrambling to make up lost ground with the U.S. given an apparent rapprochement between Washington and Moscow that saw the two sides meet in Riyadh last month, with Ukraine and its European allies excluded from the gathering.
Tensions between Kyiv and Washington then erupted in a public falling out between Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice President JD Vance in late February. After the dispute, the U.S. stopped all military aid to Ukraine, as well as intelligence-sharing.
Kyiv’s leadership has made moves to repair relations and build bridges since them, calling what happened “regrettable,” with Trump and other officials saying that Zelenskyy has also apologized for the meeting in which he was roundly turned on by U.S. officials before he left the White House in haste, leaving a much-vaunted critical minerals deal unsigned.