American and Ukrainian negotiators met in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for a second round of negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Kyiv’s trust in Washington was again tested by the Trump administration.
Steve Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy for Russia, has echoed longtime Kremlin talking points and falsehoods about Ukraine and said he “liked” Russian President Vladimir Putin and deemed him “super smart” after meeting him in Moscow this month.
“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said on a podcast with rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson, aired on Friday night. Witkoff falsely described Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine as wanting to join Russia and dismissed European postwar security efforts as “a posture and a pose”.
Witkoff said Washington’s goal in peace talks was to secure a “30-day ceasefire, during which time we discuss a permanent ceasefire”. But Kyiv has already accused Moscow of violating its pledge to pause attacks on energy infrastructure.
The Kremlin did not comment on the Witkoff interview, but pro-government voices have welcomed it.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russian propaganda broadcaster RT, wrote on Telegram that “the key message from Trump’s Ukraine policy” was recognising Russia’s territorial claims.
Sunday’s discussions in Riyadh with Ukrainian officials, followed by US-Russia talks on Monday, were described as “technical” rather than high-level.
Speaking to CBS on Sunday, Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser, said they would focus on a “maritime ceasefire so that both sides can move grain, fuel and start conducting trade again in the Black Sea”.
Talks would then move to the “line of control”, including details of peacekeeping and verification mechanisms to freeze the frontline, Waltz said. Future negotiations would focus on swapping “territory for permanent peace” and “what the Ukrainians tend to talk about — as security guarantees”.
Ukrainian officials confirmed the talks would focus on the modalities of a possible ceasefire — including how it might be monitored and enforced — as well as related energy and maritime issues.
Ukraine’s defence minister Rustem Umerov was heading his country’s delegation, which included Pavlo Palisa, a presidential military adviser, foreign policy adviser Ihor Zhovkva, and several military officers, according to the presidential office.
The US delegation was led by Andrew Peek, from the National Security Council, and Michael Anton, head of policy planning at the Department of State, a US official said.
The discussions ended late on Sunday evening. Umerov said the meeting with the Americans had been “productive and focused. We addressed key points including energy.”
“President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s goal is to secure a just and lasting peace for our country and our people — and, by extension, for all of Europe. We are working to make that goal a reality,” he added.
A first round of US-Ukrainian talks took place in Jeddah on March 11, after which Kyiv said it was ready to accept a US proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire.
In response, Washington resumed military aid and intelligence sharing that had been severed after Trump’s dust-up with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House last month — a step Ukrainian officials viewed as vital to sustaining operations beyond the front line.
But the US ceasefire plan was not backed by Putin, who told Trump in a phone call on Tuesday that he was only prepared to refrain from striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days.
Ukrainian officials say Russia has not lived up to the promise, as its aerial attacks have continued daily since the leaders’ call. The attacks — which Zelenskyy said on Sunday morning included 1,100 drones, 1,580 guided aerial bombs and 15 various missiles — have targeted civilian infrastructure in cities across Ukraine.
Swarms of Russian drones attacked the Ukrainian capital on Saturday night, killing at least three people and sparking fires in several apartment blocks.
Odesa on Friday was also targeted by one of the largest Russian drone attacks of the war, with regional officials saying the strikes had led to emergency power cuts.
Czech President Petr Pavel, who had been visiting Odesa and boarded a train to Kyiv just 20 minutes before the drone attack, said the strikes underscored the challenge of negotiating with Russia.
“One has to be truly cynical when declaring the will to have peace negotiations or negotiations on a ceasefire, and at the same time to launch a massive attack on civilian infrastructure,” he told reporters. “It is extremely difficult to deal with such a party.”
Russia’s foreign ministry accused Ukraine of attempting to disrupt peace negotiations by striking an oil depot in the Krasnodar region and a gas metering station in Sudzha, a town in Russia’s Kursk region recently retaken by Russian forces. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the Sudzha attack.
“These actions show a complete unwillingness to reach any agreement and no desire for peace,” Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.
Moscow also portrays the Monday talks with the US as a low-level technical meeting to discuss safe passage for ships in the Black Sea.
Its delegation will comprise Grigory Karasin, a career diplomat and chair of the international affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, and Sergei Beseda, an adviser to the head of the FSB spy agency.
In his interview, Witkoff was also scornful of efforts by Sir Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, to assemble a “coalition of the willing” to help defend any peace in Ukraine, saying the idea was “a posture and a pose”.
Witkoff told Carlson that Starmer and other European leaders thought “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.
Starmer last week hosted military planners from more than 30 countries near London for talks on a multinational effort to defend any ceasefire. Britain and France would lead any such force.
Downing Street declined to comment, but chancellor Rachel Reeves said she was “not put off” by Witkoff’s remarks.
“We need to make sure that if there’s a ceasefire that it can be defended,” she told the BBC. “Of course the US have to be an important part of that.”
Additional reporting by George Parker in London
