The United States and Russia agreed in high-level talks Tuesday to re-establish embassy staffing in a reversal of American policy by President Donald Trump, fueling fears in Kyiv and building up Moscow’s hopes of re-entering the international mainstream.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both countries had agreed tore-establish “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow” and that Washington would create a high-level team to work on a path to ending the war in Ukraine.
Rubio said negotiators has also agreed to “begin to discuss and think about and examine both the geopolitical and economic cooperation that could result from an end to the conflict in Ukraine,” which he said could only happen once the war came to an end.
His comments came after he led a U.S. delegation in a four-and-a-half hour meeting attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other Kremlin officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Lavrov told reporters the meeting was “very useful” as he confirmed efforts to “remove obstacles” to diplomatic efforts that he blamed on the Biden administration.
Under the Trump administration, he had “reason to believe that the American side has begun to better understand our position.”
Separately, Yuri Ushakov, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, said the talks had paved a way for a possible meeting between Trump and Putin, although he did not say when that might take place, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
Trump announced last week that he and Putin had held a 90-minute phone conversation. The meeting Tuesday in Riyadh is a major turning point in Washington’s relationship with Moscow, which has been diplomatically and financially isolated since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Attention in Europe is still focused on the war in Ukraine, the deadliest conflict on the continent since World War II.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders expressed alarm and dismay at being shut out of the talks Riyadh. One of Kyiv’s main concerns is that Russia will be given the go-ahead to keep some of the 20% of Ukraine it has occupied.
