U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives in Saudi Arabia on Monday for talks with Russian officials aimed at ending Moscow's nearly three-year-old war in Ukraine. Rubio is also expected to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia to discuss Trump's proposal to resettle Palestinian residents of Gaza in other Arab countries. Russian newspaper Kommersant, citing unnamed sources, reported that the talks will take place on Tuesday in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The talks come after President Donald Trump spoke last week by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ordered top officials to begin negotiations over the war, which he had repeatedly promised to end during his presidential campaign.
Riyadh, which is also engaged in talks with Washington on the future of the Gaza Strip, has played a role in early contacts between the Trump administration, which took office on Jan. 20, and Moscow, helping to secure a prisoner swap last week.
Top U.S. diplomat Rubio, who spoke by phone on Saturday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, will meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, along with Trump national security adviser Mike Walz and White House Middle East envoy Steve Whitkov, a U.S. lawmaker, a source told Reuters. It was not immediately clear who they would meet with on the Russian side.
According to a report in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, citing unnamed sources, the talks will take place on Tuesday in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The talks will be among the first high-level face-to-face talks between Russian and U.S. officials in years and are supposed to precede a meeting between the presidents of the United States and Russia.
Rubio said on Sunday that the coming weeks and days would determine whether Putin was serious about wanting peace.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also in the region. Zelensky, who arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, said he also intended to visit Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but no dates had been set for those visits. He added that he had no plans to meet with Russian or U.S. officials and Ukraine appeared to have been invited to the talks hosted by Saudi Arabia.
Gaza talks
Rubio is also expected to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. On the agenda of their talks is likely to be Trump's proposal to resettle Palestinian residents of Gaza to other Arab countries and for the United States to rebuild their homeland.
The proposal has angered the Arab world and raised fears among Palestinians in Gaza that they will be expelled from the coastal strip of land.
Saudi Arabia, along with other Arab countries, has rejected any plan involving Palestinian resettlement, and Riyadh is leading Arab efforts to formulate a counter-proposal, which could include a reconstruction fund led by Gulf states and a deal to sideline Hamas.
Mohammed bin Salman has also insisted that Saudi Arabia will not normalize relations with Israel — a goal of Washington — without agreeing on a path to a Palestinian state.
Rubio visited Israel on Sunday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pledging support for Israel in its regional standoff with Iran.
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