US to assess Ukraine's peace stance in Saudi Arabia meeting

WASHINGTON — The US side is planning to use Tuesday's meeting with a Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia in part to determine whether Ukraine is willing to make material concessions to Russia to end the conflict, according to two US officials.

The US delegation will also be watching for signs that the Ukrainians are serious about improving ties with the Donald Trump administration after a meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky devolved into an argument last month, said one of the officials who requested anonymity.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to arrive in Jeddah on Monday for the bilateral talks on Tuesday with Ukrainian officials, who will be led by Andriy Yermak, a top Zelensky aide. Rubio will be joined by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

"You can't say 'I want peace', and, 'I refuse to compromise on anything,'" one of the US officials said of the upcoming talks.

"We want to see if the Ukrainians are interested not just in peace, but in a realistic peace," said the other official. "If they are only interested in 2014 or 2022 borders, that tells you something."

Trump expressed optimism about the talks. "We're going to make a lot of progress, I believe, this week," he told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One.

Zelensky traveled to Saudi Arabia on Monday to "continue to work for the sake of peace". He said he hopes the talks between his team and US officials will bear results.

Aerial and naval truce

Kyiv will propose an aerial and naval cease-fire with Russia during talks, a Ukrainian official told AFP on Monday.

"We do have a proposal for a cease-fire in the sky and cease-fire at sea because these are the cease-fire options that are easy to install and to monitor and it's possible to start with them," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

US officials had met with Russian officials in the Saudi capital of Riyadh in February for separate bilateral discussions which were focused largely on rebuilding a working relationship after a near-total freeze on official contact under former US president Joe Biden.

On the battlefield, Russian troops have been making slow but steady progress in eastern Ukraine, while thousands of Ukrainian troops who stormed into Russia's Kursk region last summer are nearly surrounded.

The Ukrainian military said on Monday that Russia launched 176 drones during its overnight attack.

The country's armed forces shot down 130 drones and another 42 did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare countermeasures, the military said in a statement on Telegram.

In a statement, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said Zelensky had made progress in restoring the US-Ukraine relationship following his acrimonious meeting with Trump on Feb 28.

Hanging over Jeddah is the fate of a minerals deal between the US and Ukraine, in which Kyiv wants a security guarantee from Washington in exchange for access to certain mineral resources in Ukraine.

Zelensky and Trump were slated to sign that accord during Zelensky's Washington visit, but it was not signed after the White House blow-up between the two men.

Since then, both sides have expressed a renewed willingness to sign the deal, but no signing has taken place yet. Trump said on Sunday he thought Ukraine would sign it, with a caveat that he wanted Zelensky's government to show that it wanted peace.

The US State Department and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Agencies via Xinhua