Ukrainian and American officials meet on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia in the hope of finding a way to stop the Russia-Ukraine war. But the United States, Ukraine and Russia each have very different ideas on how a potential agreement should be.
Before the interviews, Ukraine and Russia launched fatal shots on the other territory, including a large -scale drones attack in Moscow.
What is going on today?
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the United States National Security Councilor, sat in the city of Jeddah with a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, head of the staff of the Ukrainian president, foreign minister Andrii Sybiha and Defense Minister Rustam Umerov.
US officials said they hoped to determine in meetings if Ukraine is committed to pursuing peace with Russia.
Emerging for a break after more than two hours of interviews, Mr. Waltz said: “We are coming there”.
Russia was not present for interviews. The spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri S. Peskov, said Tuesday that Russia expected the American part to inform Moscow on the results of the interviews with Ukraine.
Steve Witkoff, special correspondent for President Trump in the Middle East, plans to visit Russia in the next few days, according to two people who are familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal plans.
Commercial strikes of Ukraine and Russia
Hours before the start of the talks, Russian officials said that Ukraine attacked Moscow with its largest bombardment of long -range drones.
The Russian Ministry of Defense declared that it had reduced at least 91 drones before dawn in the Moscow region, together with over 240 drones that aim for other parts of the country. At least three people were killed and 18 others were injured in the Moscow region, the Russian authorities said. The Ukrainian army declared that he had targeted the Moscow oil refinery, together with an oil production station in the Orel region. None of the statements could be verified independently.
Kiev has long claimed that the only way to force Russia to accept a lasting peace agreement is through strength and increasing the cost of the war for the Kremlin. The times of the attack during the night in Moscow had to take home that message, Andriy Kovalenko, a high Ukrainian official focused on Russian disinformation operations, in a note.
Russia has also continued its relentless bombing of Ukrainian civil and military institutions, regularly launching more than 100 drones every night.
Tuesday morning, the Ukraine aeronautics said that Russia had launched 126 drones and a ballistic missile at night. At least one person was killed when a Russian drone hit a warehouse in Kharkiv and at least 17 others were injured in attacks elsewhere in the country, the Ukrainian authorities said.
State of war
The Russian forces have long detained the initiative on the battlefield in Ukraine. In recent weeks, they have also managed to resume about two thirds of the territory that Ukraine seized last summer in the Kursk Russia region.
But Ukrainian forces have blocked the Russian offensive in the eastern region of Donetsk in recent months and have started to win back small ground stains, according to military analysts and Ukrainian soldiers. However, military analysts discussed whether, after more than 15 months on the offensive, the Russian brigades run out or are grouping for a renewed push.
The drones, not the great and heavy artillery for which the war was once known, inflicts about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian victims, according to the Ukrainian military. They kill multiple soldiers and destroy multiple armored vehicles than all traditional weapons of combined war, including sniper rifles, tanks, obice and mortar, say Ukrainian commanders and officials.
The war killed and wounded over one million soldiers, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates.
Usa-Ukraine tensions
These are the first high -level and in person interviews for the United States and Ukraine from a meeting on 28 February to the White House in which President Trump and vice -president JD Vance punched and reproached President Volodymy Zlensky, saying that he was not grateful enough for the support of the United States.
Ukraine is facing the discouraging challenge to adapt to its main ally that adopts the positions of its enemy. Russia and the Trump administration question Zelensky’s legitimacy and have blamed Ukraine for starting the war.
Ukrainian officials are trying to smooth out relations with the Trump administration. During the weekend, French and British officials trained the Ukrainian delegation on how to talk to the Americans, said a Ukrainian official with the delegation.
Ukraine proposed a respite in the air, saying that he would immediately stop the long -haul strikes in Russia if Moscow accepted an equivalent arrest. This plan, supported by the European nations, including France, is foreseen as a first step in the construction of trust in view of the talks on the overall conflict – and the Ukrainian delegation should raise the proposal again in Jeddah’s meetings.
Ukraine is also more widely looking for a recovery of American military aid and sharing of intelligence suspended after the debacle of the oval office. The cutting of intelligence has already altered the soldiers in combat, according to the Ukrainian commanders on the field.
Potential concessions
While the European allies have promised further support to Kiev, Ukraine is seen as some options to reverse Russia’s recent earnings on the battlefield.
During the flight to Jeddah, Rubio said that Ukraine should have made concessions on Earth that Russia had taken since 2014 as part of any agreement to end the war. But he also said it would be indispensable in future interviews with Moscow to determine what Russia was willing to grant.
“We don’t know how far they are really far,” he said, referring to Ukraine and Russia.
Anton Troianovski AND Rappept on the field Contributed relationships.