The Trump administration will send top officials to Saudi Arabia for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
It’s not clear if Mike Waltz, who is national security director, and Steve Witkoff, who is special envoy to the Middle East, have already left.
Two sources familiar with the situation told NBC News that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, Steve Witkoff, and Mike Waltz, who is the national security director, are going to Saudi Arabia to start talks about making peace between Russia and Ukraine.
It wasn’t said when the trip would start, and it’s not clear if the three have already left.
This comes just a few days after President Trump said he talked on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the possibility of starting peace talks to end the war.
“After the call, we agreed to work together very closely and even visit each other’s countries,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. “We also agreed that each of our teams would start negotiating right away.”.
This weekend, top Trump administration officials like Vice President JD Vance, Rubio, and U.S. Keith Kellogg, special envoy to Ukraine, visited Germany for Munich Security Conference, where Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, discussed the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.Readouts of the call from both countries say that they talked about the war in Ukraine and other things.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine needs to be a part of any talks to end the war in a speech at the security conference on Saturday.
Kellogg supports Putin’s idea of talking to Putin to bring peace to Russia and Ukraine, stating Ukraine will not accept deals made without their support. Kellogg emphasized the importance of talking to adversaries and urged Western leaders to take more action to punish Russia with sanctions.He also said that talks to end the war could centre on Russia’s readiness to give up territory and on going after Putin’s oil income.
But lately, some members of the administration haven’t seemed eager to name any specific moves that Russia might make before possible talks.
“What should Russia give up in order to make a deal with Ukraine?” Trump was asked on Thursday. He wouldn’t say.
“It’s too early to say what will happen in the negotiation.” At a news conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump said, “It depends on what is going to happen. Maybe Russia will give up a lot, maybe they won’t.”
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. probably won’t want Ukraine to join NATO as part of a peace deal. He also said that the U.S. is likely to back talks in which Ukraine gives up land that the Kremlin already has control of.
“Like you, we want a free and prosperous Ukraine.” While on a trip to NATO’s offices in Brussels on Wednesday, Hegseth gave a speech. “But we must first recognise that returning to Ukraine’s borders before 2014 is an unrealistic goal,” he said.