Top U.S. and Russian officials convened in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss improving bilateral relations and negotiating an end to The four-and-a-half-hour meeting marked the most extensive contact between the two adversaries since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022,

As Europeans talked the possibility of contributing peacekeepers to back any Ukraine peace deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said in Riyadh that Moscow would not accept the deployment of NATO troops there,

The talks between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, concluded with Rubio confirming that the nations would reopen missions in Washington and Moscow.

The president was answering reporters' questions at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where a BBC journalist asked whether Ukrainians might feel "betrayed" after not being invited to the talks in Riyadh The president is now asked about what role Elon Musk has within his administration,

Marco Rubio’s visit to Riyadh, his first as secretary of state, came amid uncertainty about the future of Gaza and Ukraine and criticism of unilateral U.S. moves over the wars in both places.

The future of Ukraine will be discussed this week in Riyadh between Americans and Russians, with neither Europeans, nor, at the time of writing, Ukrainians themselves at the table. The question for European leaders now is: what can any of them do about it?

Since his return to office in late January, U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear he wants to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as he can, irrespective of what that means for Ukrainians. Breaking with the West’s years-long isolation of Russian President Vladimir Putin,

The United States and Russia will appoint high-level teams to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine and are working to reestablish diplomatic channels, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the end of key talks that excluded Kyiv.

The meeting is meant to pave the way for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The United States has proposed its own United Nations resolution marking the third anniversary of Russia’s war in Ukraine after refusing to back one drafted by Kyiv and backed by Europe.

Putin said that Trump was addressing the Russia-Ukraine conflict in a rational manner, rather than emotionally, but implied that the conflict might not be resolved as quickly as Trump hopes.