Russian, U.S. officials travel to talks in Saudi Arabia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio were expected to arrive in Saudi Arabia on Monday for talks between the two superpowers. Rubio said in a Sunday interview that he was already scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia before President Trump spoke to Russian leader Vladimir Putin last week. Rubio said he did recently speak to Lavrov by phone to open up a channel of communication. But he downplayed the upcoming meeting, saying a peace process was more than one meeting or phone call.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin-run news agency TASS reported that Lavrov and Rubio were scheduled to start the talks in the Saudi capital city of Riyadh on Tuesday. The talks will largely focus on restoring U.S.-Russian relations—which hit a low point during President Joe Biden’s administration, TASS reported.

Will the two countries talk about Ukraine? The talks will feature discussions on how to peacefully settle the conflict in Ukraine, TASS reported. But Secretary Rubio on Sunday told CBS News’ Face The Nation that the meeting in Saudi Arabia would only be the first of many steps in solving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The war has gone on for years and will not end overnight, he said.

Late last week, Rubio and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss how to end the war. Zelenskyy told them that his country wanted peace but needed security guarantees before it was willing to stop fighting. He added that U.S. military strength was the key to ensuring such security. Europe, Ukraine, and the United States all needed to have a unified position about how to end the war before Ukrainian officials could meet with the Kremlin, Zelenskyy said.

Dig deeper: Read William Fleeson’s report in WORLD Magazine about how the possibility of peace looks to Ukrainian refugees in Poland.