Zelenskyy again demands Ukraine is involved in talks after Russia and US agree to create team to explore peace deal – Europe live
It’s just past 9pm in Kyiv, 10pm in Moscow, and 2pm in Washington. Here’s a recap of the latest developments: Top US and Russian officials held talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday where they agreed to continue planning an end to the Ukraine war and to pursue closer cooperation. The talks, which included US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, were the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in three years and marked a tectonic shift in Washington’s approach to Russia, dramatically moving away from the Biden administration’s efforts to isolate Moscow. Rubio said Russia and the US had agreed to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore “economic and investment opportunities which will emerge from a successful end to the conflict in Ukraine”. The US secretary of state said an end to the Ukraine conflict must be acceptable to all involved, including Ukraine, Europe and Russia. No Ukrainian or even European officials were present at the meeting. A statement from Rubio said the meeting was “the first step of a long and difficult journey”. Lavrov reiterated Russian’s rejection of the dea of western boots in Ukraine. The deployment of Nato member troops in Ukraine, even if they were operating there under a different flag, was unacceptable, the Russian foreign minister said. He also rejected a US proposal that Russia and Ukraine halt strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure. Putin’s chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said the talks had “gone well” and that a potential Vladimir Putin-Donald Trump summit was discussed. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would not accept the results of talks between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia that were held “behind Ukraine’s back” on Tuesday. “It feels like the US is now discussing the ultimatum that Putin set at the start of the full-scale war,” he said after a meeting with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Zelenskyy also said he would seek the return of occupied eastern and southern towns and villages via diplomatic means. Zelenskyy also announced that he had postponed a visit to Saudi Arabia, originally expected on Wednesday. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said it was absurd for Russia to talk about peace while killing Ukrainians. Without criticising the Trump administration directly, he said the high-level US-Russia talks had not been properly prepared, adding that they were merely a forum for more Russian “ultimatums”. Podolyak said there was no point in having a “fake peace” that would lead to “an inevitable continuation of the war”. France reportedly plans to a host a second meeting to discuss Ukraine and European security on Wednesday. The meeting comes after Paris convened an emergency meeting of EU nations and the UK on Monday, and will reportedly include European countries who were not present at the time and Canada. The security talks in Paris on Monday yielded no concrete measures, as European leaders struggled to present a united front amid divisions over the deployment of troops to Ukraine. Poland’s president Andrzej Duda said the US has no intention of lowering its troop numbers in “our part” of eastern Europe. Duda, who has long been friendly to Trump, said there are “no concerns” that Washington would “in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe” and urged Poles to “remain calm” in light of shifting priorities under the new US president. Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen warned that the current geopolitical and security situation was “worse than the cold war”. Frederiksen told the Danish parliament that “we are in a far more difficult … and more dangerous security situation than we have been in my lifetime” and called for a radical ramp-up of Danish defence spending. We’ll bring you any further updates on US and global reaction to the talks in the US politics blog here: