Washington signals concessions from Kyiv are expected as Ukraine-US talks begin in Jeddah

Negotiations between the United States and Ukraine got underway in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah on Tuesday, in the first high-level contact between the two countries since an angry exchange between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump at the White House last month led to an end of US military support for Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry released a video of the US and Ukrainian officials sitting down for talks, adding that the sides would discuss “the path to peace” as well as bilateral relations between Ukraine and the US.

Ukraine is represented by the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak, who posted the first photographs of the delegations on Tuesday and said the talks had begun “constructively”, as well as Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov and Zelensky’s Deputy Chief of Staff Pavlo Palisa.

Leading the US delegation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters en route to Saudi Arabia on Monday that he was “optimistic” about the upcoming talks, stressing that there was “no military solution to this situation” and that the US delegation needed to leave the talks with “a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things” to end the war.

“We have to understand the Ukrainian position and just have a general idea of what concessions they’d be willing to make, because you’re not going to get a ceasefire and an end to this war unless both sides make concessions,” Rubio added.

Washington’s delegation also includes Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, who is expected to travel to Moscow later this week to meet with Vladimir Putin, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Witkoff told Fox News on Monday that Zelensky had apologised for the Oval Office “incident” in a letter to Trump, though he did not specify whether he was referring to the same letter that Trump read aloud in his address to Congress last week, the text of which was also posted by Zelensky on X, and which did not include a direct apology.