After weeks of miserable disagreements, U.S. and Ukrainian diplomats exited their private negotiating room in Saudi Arabia with a plan for ending the Russian invasion.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Michael Waltz left the meeting in the coastal city of Jeddah with a clear message: “The ball is now in [Russia’s] court.”
“Today, we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that’s enduring and sustainable and accounts for their interests, their security, their ability to prosper as a nation,” Rubio said.
“We’ll take this offer now to the Russians and hope that they’ll say ‘yes,’ that they’ll say ‘yes’ to peace,” the secretary of state continued. “The ball is now in their court.”
Rubio and Waltz spent hours in private negotiations with their Ukrainian counterparts: Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Minister of Defense Rustem Umerovto, and Head of Presidential Office Andriy Yermak.
Their ornate and secure venue was a far cry from the increasingly desperate situation on the battlefield 3,000 miles away. Ukrainians and Russians reportedly clashed more than 200 times on the front line following dawn on Tuesday, with fighting ongoing.
Ukraine has done its best to retaliate against Russia’s mass-scale aerial attacks. It launched a surprise assault on Moscow overnight, which killed at least three people and injured at least 18, and was deemed by Russian authorities as the largest attack of its kind on the capital city since the invasion of Ukraine began.
The Ukrainian military boasted via its Telegram feed that it successfully struck the Moscow Oil Refinery, which provides up to half of the city’s gas and diesel.
Russia has been bombarding Ukraine with aerial assaults for days — at least 22 Ukrainians were killed in such attacks on Saturday in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions.
President Donald Trump made a pivot toward the Kremlin and against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky not long after taking office. He accused the Ukrainian leader of being a dictator, exploiting American generosity, and not genuinely seeking peace.
Zelensky was kicked out of the White House last month following a televised argument with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office.
The White House then further complicated Ukraine’s battlefield situation by freezing military support and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv in a bid to strong-arm them closer to the United States’s vision for peace.
This recent hostility made the meeting in Saudi Arabia — the first since the Oval Office spat — critical for Ukraine’s struggle to gain U.S. support in stopping the Russians from marching further into its territory.
Despite the animosity between Ukraine and the U.S., Russian leaders are not exactly confident they have Trump’s support. They warned the public not to delude themselves into seeing the White House as an ally.
UKRAINE STRUGGLING TO HOLD RUSSIAN LAND THAT COULD BECOME BARGAINING CHIP IN PEACE TALKS
“Don’t rush to put on rose-tinted spectacles,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow on Tuesday at the Higher School of Economics, according to Reuters. “We always need to hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. And we must always be ready to defend our interests.”
Trump warned on Friday that he is “strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.”