The conflict in Ukraine requires a lasting resolution, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has said following high-level talks between Russia and the US in Saudi Arabia.
Waltz was part of the US delegation in Riyadh, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Washington’s special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff. The head of the Russian delegation, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, has stated that the two countries agreed to start the process of resolving the Ukraine conflict.
”This needs to be a permanent end to the war, and not a temporary end, as we’ve seen in the past,” Waltz told a press conference in Riyadh.
The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were supposed to stop the fighting between Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Moscow repeatedly accused Kiev of violating the accords, leading to a decision by President Vladimir Putin to launch the military operation in 2022.
Germany and France, the guarantors of the failed accords, later admitted that they only signed them to buy Kiev time to build up its military.
Speaking after talks in Riyadh on Tuesday Waltz claimed that negotiations on the Ukraine conflict will focus on territory and security guarantees.
The formerly Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye joined Russia following a series of referendums in 2022. Crimea previously voted to become Russian in 2014. Ukraine seeks to get them back under its control, while Russia rejects Kiev’s claims outright.
US president Donald Trump recently suggested that Kiev could get some of the territory back, noting, however, that a return to pre-2014 borders was “unlikely.”
Moscow has repeatedly insisted that any peace settlement must address the “root causes” of the conflict, including Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO. Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have since discounted the likelihood of membership for Kiev as an outcome of the peace settlement.
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Russia and US agree on Ukraine peace talks – Lavrov
At the Munich Security Conference last week, Zelensky stated that if Ukraine will not be admitted into the US-led military bloc, it will require substantial assistance from the US and the EU to build an army comparable in size to Russia’s.
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