By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
Top Trump administration officials are set to travel to Saudi Arabia next week to hold talks with Russian officials to discuss bringing the war in Ukraine to an end, multiple media outlets reported on Sunday.
The delegation is expected to include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy.
Rubio spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in a phone call on Saturday, following up on President Trump’s recent call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Secretary re-affirmed President Trump’s commitment to finding an end to the conflict in Ukraine. In addition, they discussed the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues,” the State Department said in a readout of the Rubio-Lavrov call.
Ukrainian officials said they were not invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview that aired Sunday that he will “never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine” if Ukrainian officials don’t participate in the negotiations.
While it’s still unclear how the war will end, the Trump administration’s policy toward Russia is a dramatic shift from the Biden administration. After Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden refused to speak with Putin despite acknowledging the risk of nuclear was at its highest point at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also refused to engage in any meaningful diplomacy with Lavrov, holding only brief conversations with him about prisoner exchanges after the invasion.
Please share this story and help us grow our network!
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.
Dave DeCamp
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.