TRUMP’S HIGH LEVEL PEACE TALKS: US and Russia Agree to Work Toward Ending The War

High-level delegations from the U.S. and Russia held talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday over the fate of Ukraine, the negotiations taking place without Kyiv’s participation.

The State Department said the talks were aimed to discuss ending the three-year-long war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022 and followed sustained cross-border aggression from Moscow since 2014.

This needs to be a permanent end to the war and not a temporary end as we’ve seen in the past,” said US national security adviser Mike Waltz, who accompanied secretary of state Marco Rubio and Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff at the talks.

“The practical reality is that there’s going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees, those are just fundamental basics,” Waltz added noting that Trump was “determined to move very quickly”.

Russia, US Agree On Key Principles For Resolving Ukraine Conflict

Trump’s NSA Mike Waltz laid out four key tenets to talks with Putin on ending the Ukraine war.
–Appoint high level teams to negotiate the end of war in Ukraine
–Re-staff US and Russian embassies
–Talk economic and geopolitical cooperation
–Remain engaged in diplomacy

US and Russia agree to restore bilateral diplomatic missions — Putin pic.twitter.com/SGJgh0WRsC

— RT (@RT_com) February 19, 2025

Alert: Potential U.S. Peace Plan for Ukraine! pic.twitter.com/t7TT2zy0Xs

— US Homeland Security News (@defense_civil25) February 19, 2025

Wow, Trump is 100% done with Zelensky. Martial law, refusal to seek peace, lack of elections and his 4% approval rating are given as reasons why it’ll only be the US and Russia at the negotiating table. This war is ending. pic.twitter.com/nKdrw3vWo1

— Clint Russell (@LibertyLockPod) February 18, 2025

Russia wants peace.

The USA wants peace.

Ukraine does not want peace.

Europe does not want peace.

Ask yourself why.

— Joey Mannarino (@JoeyMannarinoUS) February 18, 2025

Trump isn’t getting enough recognition for what he is doing right now.

Just a couple months ago, Ukraine was firing US/UK missiles into Russia, and Russia was showing off hypersonic ballistic missile systems.

The world was the closest it’s been to nuclear war since 1962.

Trump… pic.twitter.com/OSPS02L2jV

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) February 17, 2025

Just The News:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff went on to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his contingent in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. The talks included Ukraine, but broadly addressed the prospect of renormalizing relations between Washington and Moscow. Both parties agreed to restaff their respective embassies and discussed a range of economic issues, including sanctions and energy production.

Only a beginning

Russian and American diplomats alike hailed the talks as productive, though they by no means signaled an imminent end to the fighting or a return to pre-war norms. Rubio, for his part, cautioned that the talks only signaled a beginning of the process and not a resolution.

“We not only listened, but also heard each other,” Lavrov told the Associated Press. “I have reason to believe that the American side has started to better understand our position.”

Ukrainians were not party to the discussions, a development that had many fearing that Washington planned to sell out Kyiv to Moscow. Former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, a vocal critic of Trump and the Russian government, expressed concerns the talks could be “Yalta 2.0,” referencing a World War II conference of allied nations that saw western leaders cede a large sphere of influence to the Soviet Union.

The talks were bilateral and addressed more than Ukraine

Though much of the media billed the meeting as a Ukrainian peace summit, the talks were in reality part of a broader diplomatic rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia and Ukraine was merely one of many topics at the summit. Despite the hysteria, even McFaul conceded that “[t]he Russian delegation is in Riyadh to improve US-Russia relations, not to negotiate an end of their invasion of Ukraine.”

Among the main topics were the return of American companies to Russia, economic cooperation, embassy staffing, and the creation of senior teams to discuss the conflict in eastern Europe. Stalwart Trump loyalists in Congress, moreover, expressed understanding that the talks’ Ukraine dialogues were merely introductory.

“This is simply sitting down with each side of the table trying to understand where they’re coming from, what their demands are, what they want, and then you bring them, bring the two together. But this is, this is just the first step in a path to peace, and I think we should all be thankful for that,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast.

“I don’t think that we should ever prefer war to continue perpetually and President Trump is finally, we finally have a leader who is taking the first steps for that, but he has shown historically, especially in his first administration, to be an extraordinarily adept deal maker in foreign affairs,” he added.

Europe held a Ukraine peace summit without Russia

European frustrations with being left out of the Riyadh talks and the prospect of a deal proceeding without the input of their nations of Ukraine were somewhat ironic in light of last year’s “peace summit” in which European leaders met with Zelensky to discuss a conclusion to the war. That meeting notably excluded Russian delegates.

The June 2024 summit in Switzerland saw Zelensky work to sway the global community towards his vision for a lasting peace that included the restoration of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory and a war crimes tribunal for Putin.

More than 100 countries attended the summit at Lake Lucerne, though it failed to achieve any meaningful results.

“Excellencies, I must also note that this summit could have been more results-oriented if the other party to the conflict — Russia — was present in the room,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said at the time.

The media rollercoaster

After the talks concluded, Politico Playbook heralded “A new day for U.S.-Russia relations,” in a stunning pivot from its tone in the leadup to the talks. Writing in Playbook, the outlet’s Jack Blanchard described the American pivot away from Europe as the continent’s “biggest foreign-policy crisis in decades.”

Much of that outlet’s reporting highlighted the contrast between American and European visions of the continent’s security future and painted the Riyadh talks as a wedge, though its subsequent reporting emphasized the bilateral angle.

The Associated Press also presented something of a pivot on the talks. One article leading up to the summit bore the headline “Ukraine and Europe worry about being sidelined as Trump pushes direct talks with Russia on war’s end.”  After the meeting, the outlet’s main article read “Russia and US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war in a remarkable diplomatic shift.”

Several modern precedents

Initial talks between a mediating party and just one side of a dispute have plenty of precedent, both in recent conflicts and in decades prior. Such instances occurred during the Israel-Gaza conflict, the North Korean detente, the Yugoslav wars, and Vietnam, to name a few.

Before the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Witkoff visited the Israeli government and brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into line with the deal. Notably, many of its terms had been set due to negotiations under the Biden administration, but Witkoff received international credit for pushing the Israelis over the line to acceptance.

Trump’s first term dealings with North Korea, moreover, saw Washington’s envoys work with Pyongyang well before Trump or the South Korea President met at the demilitarized zone. Then CIA Director Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang while senior North Korean officials came to the White House. Trump and Kim Jong Un ultimately met in Singapore.

During the Cold War, such meetings, both covert and official, were commonplace. In 1973, for example, Henry Kissinger visited Hanoi amid the Vietnam War to discuss a possible resolution with that government.