First round of Russia-US talks in Riyadh wraps up after ‘very serious discussions’

The first round of direct talks between Moscow and Washington has ended in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, senior aide to Vladimir Putin and member of the Russian delegation Yury Ushakov told reporters on Tuesday.

Ushakov said that the delegations had undertaken “very serious discussions on all issues” and had agreed to improve bilateral relations. While he confirmed that a potential summit between Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump had been discussed at the talks, Ushakov stressed that an in-person meeting between the two was unlikely to take place next week, as Bloomberg had earlier reported.

New teams of negotiators charged with negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine would make contact with each other as soon as they were appointed, Ushakov said, adding that Putin had yet to decide who would represent Russia in those talks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told AP that the delegations had agreed to restore embassy staffing and create a high-level team tasked with both negotiating a peace deal for Ukraine and promoting US-Russian economic cooperation.

“We’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits,” Rubio said, admitting that the deterioration of US-Russian ties in recent years had impacted the ability of both countries’ diplomatic missions to operate.

Another member of the Russian delegation, Kirill Dmitriev, said it was too early to talk of concessions following the talks, but indicated that the two sides had listened to one another with respect and as equals, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that US and Russian officials had agreed to “lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest” and to “remain engaged to make sure the process moves forward in a timely and productive manner”.

Fox News White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich wrote on X that according to her foreign diplomatic sources with knowledge of talks in Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia were proposing a three-stage peace plan, to involve a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine, and the signing of a final peace agreement.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied any knowledge of the “three-stage plan” at a press conference held after the talks, and said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told him on Tuesday that the reports were “fake”, TASS reported.