Ukraine’s future at stake as U.S., Russia, Europe hold separate talks – National

A peaceful and lasting end to the war in Ukraine is finally being discussed — but not all parties are at the same table.

U.S. and Russian officials on Tuesday held their first talks since the war began nearly three years ago, with an opening round of bilateral negotiations in Saudi Arabia. The meeting came hours after European leaders convened in Paris to discuss shoring up their own security, as well as Ukraine’s.

None of the meetings included representatives from Kyiv, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says is absolutely necessary.

Canada will participate in another round of European talks on Wednesday.

The separate talks underscore the complexity of ending the deadliest European conflict since the Second World War, analysts say. While the new Trump administration is focused on securing a peace deal quickly, Ukraine’s EU allies want to ensure the U.S. doesn’t embolden Russia or leave a security vacuum on the continent.

“What the Americans don’t want to do is have a long, drawn-out peace process where there’s multiple stakeholders at the table, multiple drafting options, and this thing goes on forever,” said Andrew Rasiulis, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and a former defence official. “The Europeans, of course, are pushing hard against that now.

“So these are two parallel tracks, and at some point they’ll intersect. The question is how.”

Tuesday’s meeting between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh effectively ended the strategy of isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war he began in 2022.

The talks are expected to lead to a future meeting between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, though both sides said no dates have been set for that summit.

While Ukraine was discussed, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters after the meeting that the two sides also agreed to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.

White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said the U.S. position was that the war must come to a permanent end, and that any peace negotiations will involve “some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week it was “unlikely” Ukraine would get back all the land Russia has seized over the course of the war.

On Tuesday, he appeared to agree that Ukraine should also hold new elections.

“When (Ukraine says) they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to — wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say like, you know, ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve had an election?’” Trump told reporters in Florida.

Russia also continues to insist that any pledge of a future Ukrainian membership in NATO must be taken off the table, which has been echoed by members of the Trump administration.

Rubio stressed that the talks marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needs to be done. That included bringing in Ukrainian and European officials into future talks, he added, which he assured in a call with European leaders later on Tuesday.

While the U.S. and Russia appeared to be growing closer, there were disagreements forming among European leaders on how to step up for Ukraine in the event of a future peace agreement.

Monday’s talks in Paris between the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, NATO and the European Union saw agreements on boosting defence spending, but they remained split on the idea of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine to back up any peace deal.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he’s ready to consider sending British forces on the Ukrainian ground alongside others “if there is a lasting peace agreement.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was also open to discussing troop deployments.

But the leaders of Germany, Poland and Italy pushed back on that idea, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz calling such talk “premature” and “highly inappropriate” ahead of a peace deal. French President Emmanuel Macron was non-committal.

Trump said Tuesday he would be “fine” with European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, something Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the Riyadh meeting was something Moscow would not accept.

Starmer added any European security guarantee would need U.S. backing, which American officials said remained a possibility.

Zelenskyy on Tuesday emphasized that his government must be involved in peace talks moving forward.

“We want no one to decide anything behind our backs,” Zelenskyy told reporters during a visit to Turkey. “No decision can be made without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine.”

Zelenskyy postponed his own planned trip to Saudi Arabia to avoid giving legitimacy to the U.S.-Russia meeting, the Associated Press and Reuters reported.

Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, will be in Kyiv on Wednesday for talks with Zelenskyy.

Canada has been invited to a second round of security talks in Paris on Wednesday with other European leaders not present at Monday’s meeting, a government source confirmed to Global News.

Foreign Minister Melanie Joly on Tuesday said she wants Canadians to play a role in keeping the peace in Ukraine.

She told a virtual news conference from Brussels that “we want to be part of these conversations regarding security guarantees,” and that Canada is pushing the U.S. to include Ukraine in future talks.

Trump had long promised to quickly bring an end to the Ukraine war upon entering the White House in January.

The war, which will hit the three-year mark next week, has seen the front line in eastern Ukraine effectively frozen for several months, though Russian troops are making slow but steady gains. Both sides have lost thousands of lives in what Waltz on Tuesday called a “meatgrinder.”

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that neither Kyiv nor Moscow can win on the battlefield.

“The Ukrainians have the will to hold on … but it’ll be a further attritional war and it will end eventually through, ultimately, Ukrainian exhaustion and the lines will be further west than they are today,” Rasiulis said.

He said the Trump administration is likely looking at Easter as a potential deadline to secure a deal, while Putin is aiming for Russia’s Victory Day holiday on May 9 — the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany that has long been used for Russian propaganda.

But Rasiulis added a closer U.S.-Russia relationship may have a “negative collateral effect” for Ukraine and Europe that both will need to prepare for.

The U.S. and Russia, meanwhile, agreed to hold more talks. Lavrov said Washington and Moscow agreed to appoint representatives to carry out “regular consultations” on Ukraine.

“I have reason to believe that the American side has started to better understand our position,” the Russian minister said.

—with files from the Associated Press and Reuters