US says all sides must make concessions on land and security to end war in Ukraine

RIYADH - Senior US officials said on Feb 18, after talks with a Russian delegation in Saudi Arabia, that all sides will need to make concessions in order to bring about an end to the three-year-old war in Ukraine.

“Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey but an important one,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the talks in Riyadh.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference the talks “were not unsuccessful”.

US and Russian officials held more than four hours of talks in Riyadh on Feb 18, their first on ending the war in Ukraine, as Kyiv and its European allies watched anxiously from the sidelines and Moscow raised a major new demand.

In remarks to reporters after the Saudi-hosted meeting with Mr Lavrov, Mr Rubio said “the goal is to bring an end to this conflict in a way that’s fair, enduring, sustainable and acceptable to all parties involved, and that obviously includes Ukraine, but also our partners in Europe, and, of course, the Russian side as well”.

“There are other parties that have sanctions (on Russia). The European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well,” he said.

Mr Rubio said he was “convinced” that Moscow was willing to engage in a “serious process” to end the war.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement that the two top diplomats agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible”.

White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, also part of the American delegation alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff, told reporters that no date was set for a summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US delegation said negotiations would include discussions about territory and security guarantees for Ukraine. Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine.

“This needs to be a permanent end to the war and not a temporary end, as we’ve seen in the past,” Mr Waltz said, adding that “there is going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees”.

Even while the meeting was under way, Russia signalled a hardening of its demands as Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow it was “not enough” for Nato to not admit Ukraine as a member.

She said Nato must go further by disavowing a promise it made at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 that Kyiv would join at a future, unspecified, date. “Otherwise, this problem will continue to poison the atmosphere on the European continent,” she added. There was no immediate response from Nato members or the US.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has consistently demanded Nato membership as the only way to guarantee his country’s sovereignty and independence from its nuclear-armed neighbour.

Ukraine and European leaders are worried that Mr Trump could cut a hasty deal with Moscow that ignores their security interests, rewards Russia for invading its neighbour and leaves Mr Putin free to threaten Ukraine or other countries in the future.

Critics say Mr Trump’s team, by ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine and saying Kyiv’s desire to win back all its lost territory is an illusion, has made major concessions in advance. US officials say they are simply recognising reality.

Ukraine has said no peace deal can be made on its behalf.

“We, as a sovereign country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us,” Mr Zelensky said last week.

In Riyadh, three US officials in the first month of their jobs – Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Mr Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – were lined up opposite two veterans of Russian diplomacy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been in his role since 2004 and Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov has served as Mr Putin’s foreign policy adviser since 2012.

Media were allowed to film the two delegations, seated on opposite sides of a polished wooden table with large white floral arrangements.

Russia, US thaw frozen ties while Ukraine looks on

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, eight years after seizing Crimea and fomenting an insurgency in the east of the country. It now controls about a fifth of the country.

Mr Trump ran for president in 2024 on an oft-repeated promise to end the conflict within 24 hours, though his officials now concede it will take months. He has described the war as “ridiculous” and said that it is “destroying” Russia.

Moscow, however, has sounded increasingly confident in recent months as its troops have advanced at their fastest pace since 2022 and Mr Trump’s overtures have ended its near-total isolation from the West. Under Mr Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, the Kremlin had described relations as “below zero”.

US officials have cast the talks on Feb 18 as an initial contact to determine whether Moscow is serious about ending the war, after Mr Putin and Mr Trump spoke on Feb 12.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Feb 18 that “President Putin has been repeating his words about his readiness for peace talks from the very beginning”.

But he also said any deal with Ukraine would have to take into account a possible challenge to the legitimacy of Mr Zelensky, who has remained in power beyond the end of his normal term because Ukraine is under martial law.

The Kremlin had suggested the discussions would cover “the entire complex of Russian-American relations”.

Mr Putin and Mr Trump have said that, apart from the war, they are keen to discuss issues such as nuclear arms control and how to bring down global energy prices.

Under Mr Biden, the US provided many tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and aid to Ukraine and joined other Western governments in slapping waves of sanctions on Russia.

Moscow says it has withstood the sanctions and that they have rebounded on those who imposed them.

“US businesses lost around US$300 billion (S$402 billion) from leaving Russia. So there is huge economic toll on many countries from, you know, what’s happening right now,” Mr Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, told reporters in Riyadh.

Russia said that in a call on Feb 15, Mr Lavrov and Mr Rubio discussed removing barriers to trade and investment.

Europe seeks to retain influence

It remains unclear how Europe will engage Washington after Mr Trump stunned Ukraine and European allies by bringing Mr Putin in from the cold.

European leaders, in emergency talks on Feb 17, called for higher spending to ramp up the continent’s defence capabilities but remained split on the idea of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine.

The leaders also agreed it would be dangerous to conclude a Ukraine ceasefire without a peace agreement at the same time, and that they were ready to provide security guarantees to Ukraine “depending on the level of American support”, a European official said.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said before the meeting that he was willing to send peacekeeping troops, said on Feb 17 there must be a US security “backstop” for European countries to put boots on the ground.

Mr Keith Kellogg, Mr Trump’s Ukraine envoy, said he would visit Ukraine from Feb 19, and was asked if the US would provide a security guarantee for any European peacekeepers.

“I’ve been with President Trump and the policy has always been: You take no options off the table,” he said. REUTERS, AFP