Russia, Ukraine take ‘significant first step toward peace’ after Rubio-led negotiations, White House insists

Initial discussions between Trump administration officials and Russia in Saudi Arabia Tuesday marked a ‘significant milestone’ in securing peace between Russia and Ukraine, according to the White House press secretary. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff met in Riyadh with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs advisor Yuri Ushakov to hash out ways to end the conflict. Ukraine was absent from the negotiations in Saudi Arabia. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to provide specifics about the discussions, but she said the Trump administration was committed to brokering a peace deal to end the conflict between the two countries. 

‘What I will tell you is that today, sitting down at the table was a significant first step toward peace,’ Leavitt told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a joint press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday that an invitation to the talks wasn’t extended to Ukraine and that he was postponing a scheduled trip to Saudi Arabia until March. 

Zelenskyy has stressed that Ukraine must be involved in negotiations, and said Sunday that Ukraine wouldn’t accept a peace deal if his country were absent from negotiations. 

But Leavitt said that everyone would have a seat at the negotiating table — including other European allies — as the Trump administration seeks to advance a peace deal. 

‘We’re ensuring that all parties are heard,’ Leavitt said in an interview with Fox New’s ‘America Reports’ Tuesday. ‘But you have to speak to both sides of the war in order to truly negotiate a deal and problem solve. And this is a significant first step toward peace.’

Leavitt said that President Donald Trump was in correspondence with Zelenskyy, and spoke with other European allies like French President Emmanuel Macron Monday. Additionally, she said that Trump will meet with the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House next week. 

Trump and Zelenskky also spoke over the phone Wednesday about the negotiations, and Zelenskyy said he relayed that he believes Putin isn’t interested in peace with Ukraine. 

‘I said that [Putin] is a liar,’ Zelenskyy said in an interview with NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that aired Sunday. ‘And he said, ‘I think my feeling is that he’s ready for these negotiations.’ And I said to him, ‘No, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace.”

While Zelenskyy voiced gratitude for U.S. support, he said that there is no ‘leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us, about us.’ 

‘I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy said on ‘Meet the Press.’ 

But Trump has offered reassurances that Zelenskyy would be involved in peace conversations, and told reporters Sunday on the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida that Ukraine would get a seat at the negotiating table. 

The first action the U.S. plans to take following the meetings with Russian officials is to ‘reestablish the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and in Moscow,’ Rubio told reporters from The Associated Press and CNN. 

‘For us to be able to continue to move down this road, we need to have diplomatic facilities that are operating and functioning normally,’ Rubio said, according to a State Department transcript. 

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Trump vowed on the campaign trail in 2024 that he would work to end the conflict if elected again. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton and Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.