MOSCOW: Russian and US officials will hold talks on Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Monday (Mar 24), President Vladimir Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov said.
Donald Trump spoke to both Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week and the US is also due to hold talks with Kyiv in the coming days.
“These consultations will take place on Monday, March 24th, in Riyadh,” Ushakov said on Thursday in comments published by the Kremlin.
“From the Russian side, they will be attended by Grigory Karasin, chairman of the Senate’s committee on international affairs, and Sergei Beseda, advisor to the head of the FSB security service.”
Ushakov said he had confirmed this after talks with US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Both agreed to send “expert groups” for the talks, he added.
The delegations are due to discuss “initiatives” that Putin and Trump spoke about regarding the Black Sea.
The Russian FSB in 2014 admitted that Beseda was in Kyiv during a bloody crackdown on the Ukrainian capital in the midst of the country’s pro-EU revolution.
He has been under Western sanctions since 2014.
Karasin is a career diplomat.
Kyiv has said that the US is due to hold talks with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia in the “coming days”.
It is not clear if they will take place on the same day or if the Russian and Ukrainian delegations will meet.
Waltz said on Wednesday that “technical teams” from Russia and the US would meet in Riyadh “to focus on implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire President Trump secured from Russia”.
Putin earlier turned down a US-proposed unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, agreeing only to a 30-day halt in strikes on energy infrastructure.
