US and Russia pave way for ending Ukraine war
Raunaq Mohammad
2nd March 2025
Written by Raunaq Mohammad
Russia and the US have agreed to pave the way for “future co-operation” on ending the Ukraine war and a return to normal relations between the two countries following their first high level talks since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Following four and a half hours of negotiations in Riyadh on Tuesday, the US state department said the two sides would appoint “high level teams” to seek to end the war and establish a diplomatic channel to resolve bilateral issues.
The talks marked an extraordinary sequence of events after US president Donald Trump called Putin on his own accord last week in an effort to end the war without consulting Ukraine or its European allies.
“This needs to be a permanent end to the war and not a temporary end as we’ve seen in the past” the US national security adviser Mike Waltz stated boldly.
Tuesday’s meeting in Riyadh was the first of its kind between the US and Russia since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In a sight almost unthinkable a few weeks ago, Russian and US flags flew next to each other outside the opulent palace where the meeting took place.
In language largely echoed by the Russian side, the US state department stated that the new diplomatic channel between the two countries would “lay the groundwork for future co-operation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and historic economic and investment opportunities” once the Ukraine war has been brought to an end.
Washington appeared to have given in to some of Putin’s core demands before Tuesday’s talks even began after saying Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO and reclaim territory currently occupied by Russia were not realistic.
With some indirect warning being given through this claim, the Russian side stressed that it was ‘essential to settle the initial reasons’ for the conflict and ensure “the legal interests of all countries in the region”.
Russia ruled out a role for Europe in the talks and demanded that NATO rescind an open-ended 2008 invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he had rescheduled a visit to Saudi Arabia after the US-Russian talks, describing Tuesday’s meeting as a “surprise”
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy advisor, said the US and Russia would work to “create the conditions” for a Trump-Putin meeting but he said this would probably not take place next week because ‘thorough work’ was needed first.
Normalising the bilateral relations between the US and Russia would require the US lifting sanctions against Russia which has been one of Moscow’s main demands.
The US secretary having asked what concessions Moscow would make in return said that any such step would result from “hard, difficult diplomacy” in “closed rooms over a period of time”
As Europe seeks to respond to the US-Russian talks, French President Emmanuel Macron is planning an emergency meeting of European leaders on Wednesday according to people briefed on the plans.
