Riyadh, Feb 20 (IANS) US President Donald Trump has described the Russia-US talks held in Riyadh as positive, saying that his confidence in the settlement of the Ukraine crisis has grown.
“Much more confident, they were very good,” he told reporters on Wednesday after signing a number of his new executive orders in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, TASS reported.
“Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism,” he added.
Senior US and Russian delegations gathered for talks in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh on Tuesday, as the two sides began an initial round of high-stakes negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
The talks build on last week’s phone call between President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin during which the two leaders agreed to work together toward a negotiated end to the war.
On February 18, Russia and the US held talks in Riyadh, which lasted 4.5 hours.
Russia was represented at the meeting by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, presidential aide Yury Ushakov and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) head Kirill Dmitriev.
The US was represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and the US leader’s special envoy for the Middle East Steven Witkoff.
In a statement following Tuesday’s meeting, US State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Rubio and Lavrov had agreed to “lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and historic economic and investment opportunities which will emerge from a successful end to the conflict in Ukraine”.
Bruce also noted that the US and Russia would appoint “high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides”.
According to Ushakov, the delegations talked at length about everything on the agenda, including bringing the positions of Russia and the United States together and contacts on Ukraine.
Lavrov called the conversation with US officials very constructive and reported that Russia and the US had agreed to ensure the earliest possible appointment of ambassadors in both capitals.
In turn, the US Department of State noted that Lavrov and Rubio agreed on creating negotiating teams on Ukraine as well as on future cooperation on shared geopolitical interests.
The sudden US-Russian detente has stunned US allies in Europe and Ukraine — with both expressing fear of being sidelined in talks that determine their collective futures.
Neither was invited to participate in the Saudi talks, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that Kyiv would not recognise any agreements made in its absence.
In advance of the talks, the Kremlin embraced the moment as a diplomatic opening for a new era in dialogue.
“From now on, we will talk about peace, not war,” said Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov in an interview that aired Sunday on state television.
Meanwhile, speaking on the eve of the Saudi meeting, Lavrov reminded that Trump and Putin in their phone call had agreed to end this “not normal period,” when Moscow and Washington refused to talk to one another.
In a sign of the new spirit of cooperation, the Kremlin confirmed on Monday that it had approved the unilateral release of an American caught with a small amount of cannabis in his luggage at a Moscow airport earlier this month.
–IANS
khz/
