US-mediated Russia-Ukraine talks scheduled amid intensified attacks

By Linda Bordoni 

A brief Saudi Foreign Ministry statement said the U.S.-Ukrainian talks would be held in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, confirming the kingdom’s continued efforts to achieve lasting peace to end the Ukrainian crisis.

Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, announced on Thursday that he would travel to the Arabian Peninsula nation on Monday for a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, ahead of talks later in the week with U.S. officials.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff also confirmed the meeting is planned and said he was in discussions with Ukraine for a deal framework to end the three-year war with Russia.

In February, Riyadh hosted a meeting between U.S. and Russian officials to discuss ways to halt the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two. Ukraine was not included in those talks, raising concern in Kyiv and among its European allies.

2022 Istanbul protocol

The scheduled meeting follows in the footprints of talks between the U.S and Russia that took place in Turkiye in March 2022, in the early weeks of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Witkoff described those negotiations and the resulting so-called Istanbul protocol agreement as substantive, confirming that both Russia and the U.S. see those draft accords as a possible basis for a Ukraine peace deal, though Ukraine's president has previously rejected them as unacceptable.

The 2022 Istanbul draft documents would have obliged Ukraine to give up its NATO ambitions and accept permanent neutral and nuclear-free status in return for security guarantees from the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

However, the two sides disagreed over Russian demands, which included a right of veto over actions by the guarantor states to assist Ukraine in the event of an attack.

Three years later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that current negotiations could have the Istanbul Agreements as a starting point.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman said last week that Kyiv had not received any proposals from the U.S. to use the Istanbul documents as a basis for peace negotiations and recalled that President Zelenskiy, as recently as December, rejected the Istanbul approach, describing it as an ultimatum requiring his country's surrender.

Among other points of disagreement in the 2022 negotiations was Russia's demand for deep cuts to the size of Ukraine's armed forces and the number of its tanks, missiles, warplanes and other weapons.

(Source: Reuters)