Ukraine will not accept a Saudi-talks peace deal, says Zelenskyy
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated that Ukraine would not recognise any peace agreements made without its participation, as top Russian and US officials prepare to meet in Saudi Arabia for high-stakes talks on the war in Ukraine.
“Ukraine regards any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine as ones that have no result, and we cannot recognise … any agreements about us without us,” Zelenskyy said on Monday. His comments came as Russian and American officials travelled to Riyadh before Tuesday’s talks aimed at ending Moscow’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine, with Kyiv and Europe excluded from the negotiations.
Zelenskyy confirmed Ukraine would not take part in the talks. “Ukraine did not know anything about it,” he said.
The swift push to organise the US-Russia talks came after last week’s call between Trump and Vladimir Putin, where the two leaders discussed opening negotiations on the war. The meeting in Riyadh will mark the first in-person discussions between top officials from both countries in years, after a sharp downturn in relations after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Both sides are dispatching high-level delegations, underscoring the importance they place on the talks, which could lay the groundwork for a Trump-Putin summit as early as this month.
The US delegation will feature some of Trump’s most senior aides, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday, as well as Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz.
Moscow announced that Putin had tasked his most senior foreign policy envoy, Yuri Ushakov, along with his longtime foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to travel to Saudi Arabia.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the meeting “will be devoted to the preparation of possible negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement and the organisation of a meeting between the two presidents”.
In comments cited by Tass news agency on Monday morning, Lavrov said Russia had no intention of making territorial concessions to Ukraine during the peace talks.
In September 2022, Russia declared the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine, including areas that remained outside its control.
Lavrov said Moscow would hear out “its US colleagues” but added that Europe “has no place at the negotiating table”.
Also present in Riyadh for Russia will be Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a financier subject to US sanctions, who is also reportedly a close friend of Putin’s daughter.
“A heavyweight Russia delegation is departing for Riyadh … All are loyal and trusted insiders,” the liberal commentator Alexei Venediktov wrote on his telegram channel.
Zelenskyy said in a video briefing from the United Arab Emirates on Monday, where he was on a state visit, that he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, though he stressed his visit was not linked to the Russian-US peace talks.
“So, once again, my visits have nothing in common with those talks. Although when I arrive in Saudi Arabia I will ask his majesty what he knows about the topics of the talks,” Zelenskyy added.
He also announced on Monday that Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, would visit Kyiv on Thursday. Zelenskyy said he wanted to take Kellogg on a joint trip to the frontline, where they would meet Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi.
He stressed that Europe had to be at the table for negotiations, and should be represented by a person respected in the continent. He did not rule out China’s participation but said only those who gave security guarantees stopping Russian aggression should be involved.
Kellogg, viewed as Trump’s most pro-Ukraine adviser, though with declining influence, confirmed plans to visit Ukraine. Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Monday, he underscored that no peace deal would be imposed on Kyiv.
On Sunday, Trump stated that Zelenskyy would take part in the discussions but did not specify at what stage or whether Ukrainian officials would be present in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia has played a central role in early contacts between the Trump administration and Moscow, helping to secure a prisoner swap last week. Peskov said the location was chosen because it suited both countries.
The blistering speed of talks has added to further anxieties in Europe, which has been left out of the talks.
During the Munich security conference over the weekend, Kellogg told European officials that while Europe would be consulted, it would ultimately be excluded from the negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US.
Responding to the fast-moving negotiations taking place without them, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, convened an emergency meeting in Paris with European leaders.
“We feel like we’re constantly left in the dark,” a senior European official told the Guardian, commenting on this week’s talks. “At the moment, we’re running behind the news. Our goal now is to show what we can bring to the table.”
Despite the flurry of diplomacy, little is known about Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine or Russia’s willingness to engage.
Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, on Monday sought to downplay expectations for the talks, noting that Moscow and Washington had yet to establish a framework for Ukraine peace negotiations, as Washington had not yet appointed a chief negotiator to engage with Russia.
He added that the discussions in Riyadh would centre on “agreeing on how to initiate negotiations to resolve the Ukrainian conflict”.
The US has repeatedly said it wants European peacekeeping troops to enter Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal – an idea under discussion among European leaders.
Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, on Sunday said he was prepared to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine if there was a deal to end the war with Russia.
While Russia has repeatedly rejected the possibility of European forces in Ukraine, Moscow appeared to tone down its rhetoric on Monday, with the Kremlin spokesperson, Peskov, calling it a “complex issue”.
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www.theguardian.com /world/2025/feb/18/ukraine-officials-say-us-is-appeasing-russia-with-talks-in-riyadh
Ukraine will never accept Russia’s ultimatums, Volodymyr Zelenskyy says
Luke Harding 5-7 minutes 2/18/2025
Ukraine reacted with gloom and dismay on Tuesday to the meeting between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he would never accept Russia’s ultimatums.
The high-stakes negotiations between the two delegations got under way in Riyadh just hours after Russia attacked Ukraine with dozens of drones. At least two people were killed and 26 injured in strikes across the country.
One drone hit the top floor of a high-rise residential building in the central city of Dolynska, in the Kirovohrad region. A mother and her two children were injured and taken to hospital. “A difficult night,” said the local governor, Andriy Raikovych.
Soon after the talks concluded in Riyadh, air raid sirens wailed across the capital, Kyiv. Millions of Ukrainians were told by text message to seek shelter because of a threat from Russian ballistic missiles.
Speaking in Ankara after a meeting with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not accept the results of talks on how to end the war with Russia that were held “behind Ukraine’s back”.
“It feels like the US is now discussing the ultimatum that Putin set at the start of the full-scale war,” Zelenskyy told reporters. He added: “Once again, decisions about Ukraine are being made without Ukraine. I wonder why they believe Ukraine would accept all these ultimatums now if we refused them at the most difficult moment?”
Zelenskyy also said he would seek the return of occupied eastern and southern towns and villages via diplomatic means, emphasising: “They will be Ukrainian. There can be no compromise.”
Reuters reported that Zelenskyy has postponed a visit to Saudi Arabia planned for Wednesday to avoid giving the US-Russia talks “legitimacy”.
It was absurd for Moscow to talk about peace while killing Ukrainians, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office. The latest salvo of 176 drones fired at Ukraine represented Russia’s actual “negotiating position”, he posted.
Without criticising the Trump administration directly, he said the high-level US-Russia talks had not been properly prepared, adding that they were merely a forum for more Russian “ultimatums”.
“Encouragement rather than coercion, a voluntary and bizarre renunciation of strength in favour of disheartening and unmotivated appeasement of the aggressor,” Podolyak wrote, summing up Kyiv’s negative reaction.
There is widespread scepticism that Russia would abide by any ceasefire deal unless it was underpinned by security guarantees – from the US and other western powers. Podolyak said there was no point in having a “fake peace” that would lead to “an inevitable continuation of the war”.
Ukrainians have bitter memories of two deals signed with Russia in the Belarus capital, Minsk, after Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and began a covert invasion of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Russia repeatedly violated both ceasefires.
There are fears that a quick deal between Washington and Moscow would amount to Minsk 3 – another agreement that Russia would swiftly break. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Zelenskyy said Russia was ready to expand its invasion and “wage war” against Nato.
That's their right, of course. They and Europe can fight until Russia no longer exists as a country if they want.
Bolivia and Bangladesh should hold a meeting in Grenada, to decide what parts of the United States are to be ceded to Mexico.
They sure good. And then we get to see what happens when Mexico tries to enforce it.
So since your theory of the world is might makes right Russia is entitled to whatever land they can take through an invasion of another country. The Invasion doesn't need to be justified it just needs to be successful is that it?
"entitled" has nothing to do with it. It is reality. If they don't want to give up the land, they have to be forced to do so. Telling them "bad russia" probably isn't going to cut it.
By all means, provide a realistic way Russia withdraws to 2014 borders without American lives being spent forcing it. Ukraine almost certainly doesn't have the manpower. The Biden administration sure didn't believe its possible.
The president of Mexico says she's going to sue Google over their compliance with Trump's name change to the Gulf of Mexico, she says that Mexico and Cuba combined control over half of the waters in the Gulf.
Who the fuck cares what the faux John Wayne in tailor made khakis thinks?
Not his money, not his weapons, and not his munitions.
He had his chance to make peace and instead went full on fascist arresting his political opponents; banning political parties; forcing those who would toe his line into a state run media; and not holding long overdue elections so Ukrainians could vote on whether or not to replace his sorry ass.
If Europe wants to fight this war they can do so w/o the US. Seeing how their military isn't up to doing shit; and they haven't held up their end of the bargain in promised aid- either military or financial. Promises are great- they promised the world and delivered shit.
I can see why Democrats and leftists love Zelenskyy- he is doing everything they dream of here in the US.