Saudi Arabia

Lots of people in Saudi Arabia have a soft spot for Donald Trump. They think of the American president as a straight-shooting businessman — someone who talks of interests and not values, who won’t lecture them about human rights and who shares their own distaste for woke progressive dogma.

The details of talks between the U.S. and Russia that took place in Saudi Arabia on Monday will not be made public, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

"After all, this is about technical talks," Peskov said, as quoted by Russia's state-run Tass news agency. The discussions, he added, went "into details so, certainly, the content of these talks will not be made public for sure. This is something that should not be expected."

Ukrainian and U.S. delegations are scheduled to meet on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia following Russia-U.S. talks there a day earlier on a limited Black Sea ceasefire proposal that Washington hopes will open the way for broader peace negotiations.

Day-long talks on Monday in Saudi Arabia between Russian and U.S. officials were portrayed by Washington as a step in President Donald Trump's effort to end the three-year-old war.

U.S. and Russian officials began talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday aimed at making progress towards a broad ceasefire in Ukraine with Washington eyeing a separate Black Sea maritime ceasefire deal before securing a wider agreement.

The talks, which followed U.S. negotiations with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, come as U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his drive to end the three-year-old conflict after he last week spoke to both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Talks to determine whether Ukraine is ready to engage with President Donald Trump’s peace process and consequently regain access to U.S. military aid and intelligence started on Tuesday morning.

Ukraine hailed talks with America as having started “constructively”, Kyiv state media reported on Tuesday morning. Delegations from the United States and Ukraine met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the first in-person discussions between the two countries since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous attempt at strong-arm diplomacy at the Oval Office in February.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to visit Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a planned meeting there between delegates from Ukraine and the US.

If all goes according to plan, it will be the first Ukraine-US meeting since the presidents of the two countries quarreled in the White House on February 28.

Russia could agree to using $300 billion of sovereign assets frozen in Europe for reconstruction in Ukraine but will insist that part of the money is spent on the one-fifth of the country that Moscow's forces control, three sources told Reuters.

Russia and the United States held their first face-to-face talks on ending the Ukraine war on Feb. 18 in Saudi Arabia and both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have said they hope to meet soon.

The picture says it all: Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov, America and Russia, sat about a hardwood table beneath the dripping chandeliers of Saudi Arabia’s Diriyah Palace, ready to remake Eurasia for the rest of the century. Between them sits Prince Farhan bin Abdallah, the Saudi foreign minister, and cousin to Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS). Delegates from Europe and Ukraine are nowhere to be seen.

The top diplomats from Russia and the U.S. met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to discuss improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine — talks that represented a rapid and major change in American foreign policy under President Donald Trump.

High-stakes talks in Saudi Arabia between US and Russian officials kicked off on Tuesday in a bid to improve ties and start negotiations to end Moscow's war in Ukraine.

The meeting in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh is the first in-person discussion between top officials from both countries since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago.