Russian, US negotiators meet in Saudi Arabia for Ukraine war talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump previously met in Osaka in 2019. The pair spoke on the phone recently to discuss the war in Ukraine. Photo / Getty Images

• Russian and US negotiators met in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
• The talks, excluding Kyiv, featured luxurious meals and were held at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh.
• Saudi Arabia’s role as a neutral ground marks a strategic move to boost its global influence.

Russian negotiators stayed in the five-star Ritz-Carlton and dined on scallops while in Saudi Arabia to meet with US negotiators this week where they discussed ending the war in Ukraine for the first time.

Moscow’s delegation and Donald Trump’s representatives met for four and a half hours in the Saudi Arabia capital, days after the US President spoke to Vladimir Putin on the phone.

During the lengthy talks, officials were fed a lunch menu which included a “symphony of scallop, shrimps and salmon”, the New York Times reported, citing Russian state media.

They were also fed a whole lamb and knafeh cheesecake, a Middle Eastern take on the popular Western dessert, while Kyiv was frozen out of the talks.

Inside the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh

During their visit to Riyadh, Putin’s envoy stayed in the Ritz-Carlton, where in 2017 hundreds of Saudi Arabia’s elites were rounded up and detained in what was framed as a crackdown on corruption by the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Holding the high-level talks in Riyadh marks a key moment for the royal, who is known by his initials MBS, and his plan for Saudi Arabia to become a global power player.

Saudi Arabia has in recent years blitzed ahead with a worldwide PR drive to flip perceptions of a country which has sparked outrage over its human rights record.

Its reputation plunged further after the Crown Prince was accused of ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident journalist who was strangled and dismembered by an assassination team in Turkey in 2018.

But posts from state social media accounts included the hashtag “country of peace” and calling the country the “capital of world decisions”.

Being the centre of peace negotiations also offers the country a boost when Qatar has served as a nexus for the negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Saudi Arabia has avoided taking sides in the Russian war in Ukraine, making it neutral ground for the talks to go ahead.

“We know the crown prince, and I think it’d be a very good place to be,” Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office.

Trump also spoke at an investment summit in Miami Beach hosted by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in which he praised Riyadh’s role in the talks and called it a “very special place”.

The Trump administration said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold further talks with Russia, during which the Moscow envoy insisted it would not tolerate Ukraine becoming a member of Nato.

The US President said he would likely meet Putin before the end of the month.