According to multiple sources, the Trump administration’s chief executive will meet with senior Russian officials to begin talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Mike Waltz and Middle Eastern envoy Steve Witkov are expected to travel to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with senior Russian officials.
One source said the meeting will take place in the next few days.
Sources have declined to see which Russian officials will be present, but CNN previously said it was a high-ranking experience for the Kremlin to engage in in-person meetings with the US, including top-level politics, intelligence, economic figures, Kirill and more. They report that they are gathering negotiation teams of their level. Dmitriev, a Russian official, played an important behind the scenes role in the recent US prisoner release agreement.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCall also confirmed the plan in an interview with Politico at the Munich Security Conference, saying, “Rubio, Waltz and Witkov () will be sent to the Saudi Arabia, Ukrainians, Russians and Ukraine.” Talk about it.”
The State Department had previously announced that Rubio would travel to Saudi Arabia in the coming days as part of a larger trip to Munich and the Middle East. He is scheduled to land in Israel on Saturday.
President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he could meet with Saudi Arabia’s Russian President Vladimir Putin in the “not too distant future,” but warned that no official decision had been made.
Important Context: Conferences in Munich are immersed in uncertainty about how the Trump administration will end the war in Ukraine. This week’s call between Trump and Putin raised fears that Kiev is being frozen from negotiations, and Trump’s envoy for the conflict said today that European negotiators will not be involved in the consultation.
Ukrainian President Voldimir Zelensky said on Saturday that Trump Putin’s meeting, which takes place before Zelensky can sit with the US president, could be “dangerous.”
Also today: Rubio called on Saturday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the call was made “at an initiative on the US side.” The Department and the US State Department issued a statement describing the conversation as a follow-up to Trump Putin’s call, saying it included discussions of their commitment to working towards resolution of the Ukraine conflict.
CNN’s Mariya Knight contributed a report to this post.
This post has been updated with additional details about the talk.
