The Trump administration’s push for direct negotiations with Russia without Ukraine’s involvement leaves the European allies with no clear role.
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
While American officials prepared on Sunday for the start of talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, European leaders were rushing to formulate a response to President Trump’s push for a settlement that appeared to leave them and Kyiv with no clear role in the process.
The Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, where the talks are set to take place this week, met Sunday with the kingdom’s foreign minister. Two senior Trump administration officials — the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and the Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff — will fly to Saudi Arabia to join Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the negotiations, Mr. Witkoff said Sunday in an interview with Fox News.
The final preparations follow a flurry of diplomatic discussions over the past several days that included a conversation between Mr. Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.
On Sunday, Mr. Rubio said in an interview from Jerusalem with CBS News that if an opportunity presented itself “for a broader conversation that would involve Ukraine, that would involve the end of the war, that would involve our allies all over the world, particularly in Europe, we’re going to explore it if that opportunity presents itself.”
The meeting with Russia, while preliminary, would signal the start of Mr. Trump’s accelerated timetable for a deal and his seeming determination to conduct negotiations with Russia alone, at least for now.
Ukraine will not take part, Andriy Yermak, the head of the President Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential office, confirmed Sunday in a post on the Telegram social networking site. He said that Ukraine would prefer to reach a common plan for negotiations with the Trump administration before meeting with a Russian delegation.
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