JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (news agencies) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived Monday in Saudi Arabia for a visit with its powerful crown prince ahead of his team’s meeting with America’s top diplomat.
While Zelenskyy won’t be there, his team will try to repair the damage done when his Feb. 28 visit to Washington descended into an Oval Office argument with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
At stake is the military aid and intelligence previously offered by the United States that had helped Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Saudi state television reported Zelenskyy’s arrival in Jeddah, a port city on the Red Sea where the Ukraine-U.S. summit will take place Tuesday. Zelenskyy was due to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after sunset, following the end of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was en route to Jeddah as well. However, it didn’t appear that Rubio and Zelenskyy would meet in person there, though the secretary of state also was due to meet Prince Mohammed.
Speaking to reporters aboard his plane, Rubio said he and national security adviser Mike Waltz would take stock of Ukraine’s responses.
If Ukraine and the U.S. reach an understanding acceptable to Trump, that could accelerate his administration’s push to peace talks.
“What we want to know is, are they interested entering some sort of peace conversation and general outlines of the kinds of things they could consider, recognizing that it has been a costly and bloody war for the Ukrainians. They have suffered greatly and their people have suffered greatly,” Rubio said. “And it’s hard in the aftermath of something like that to even talk about concessions, but that’s the only way this is going to end and prevent more suffering.”
He added: “I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do. I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are.”
Zelenskyy has said a team including his chief of staff Andriy Yermak, Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov will take part in the talks Tuesday. Rubio will lead the American team.
The rest of Europe remains skeptical as it has been sidelined.
The European Union last week agreed to boost the continent’s defenses and to free up hundreds of billions of euros for security in response to the Trump administration’s shift in stance on Ukraine.
White House special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Monday that the pause of U.S. intelligence-sharing with Ukraine has not limited defense intelligence-sharing.
“We never shut off intelligence for … anything defensive that the Ukrainians need,” Witkoff said.
A pause on sharing U.S. intelligence that can be used for offensive purposes by Ukrainian forces remains in effect, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official suggested that progress could be made toward reinstating intelligence-sharing with Ukraine during the Saudi talks.
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