Ukraine, Russia to hold separate talks with US in Riyadh on Monday
- 20 March, 11:43
Representatives of Ukraine and Russia will hold separate ceasefire talks with US officials in Riyadh on the same day on March 24. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said US officials would first meet with Ukrainian experts and then hold separate talks with Russian representatives.
“There will be a meeting of Ukraine and America and then some shuttle diplomacy, as our American colleagues said, America with Russia,” Zelenskiy said in Oslo on Thursday after a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
Russia will be represented in talks by Grigory Karasin, a former diplomat who now chairs the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Sergei Beseda, an adviser to the director of the Federal Security Service.
Russian presidential aide for international affairs Yuri Ushakov confirmed the bilateral talks with US representatives in Riyadh, adding that they would focus on the safety of shipping in the Black Sea. Earlier, Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov said that implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, a full ceasefire and permanent peace were discussed during the phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
The initiative to hold talks in Riyadh follows separate talks with Donald Trump this week, with both Kyiv and Moscow agreeing to pause in attacks on energy infrastructure. Putin rejected Trump’s proposed 30-day ceasefire along the entire frontline and only agreed to the temporary peace deal covering energy grids.
Both Ukraine and Russia have disputed Trump’s account of their earlier talks with Trump, suggesting that US President had misrepresented the possibility of striking a quick peace deal to end the three-year-old war. Zelenskiy denied Trump’s claims that the two leaders had discussed the possibility of US ownership of Russian-held Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine as part of the peace deal. Trump said US ownership of the power plant would be the best protection for that infrastructure and “protection of Ukrainian energy infrastructure”. Zelenskiy announced on Wednesday that Ukraine’s power plants belong to the people of Ukraine.
