US and Russia hold talks to end war in Ukraine

Good morning and welcome to White House Watch! It’s a historic day in geopolitics: high-level US-Russia talks concluded a couple of hours ago in Saudi Arabia. Let’s get straight into:

Top officials from the US and Russia met earlier today in Riyadh for four-and-a-half hours, taking the first steps towards warming ties and negotiating the end of the war in Ukraine.

In a sight almost unthinkable even a few weeks ago, Russian and US flags flew next to each other outside an opulent palace. Glaringly absent was Kyiv.

The US and Russia agreed to “lay the groundwork for future co-operation” by appointing “high-level teams” to seek to end the war and to establish a diplomatic channel to resolve bilateral issues, according to US state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce.

US President Donald Trump dispatched secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East, to lead the Washington delegation, while Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Ukraine and Europe, meanwhile, are seriously distressed over the possibility that Trump wants to settle the conflict on Putin’s terms. The US already seems to have made significant concessions to Putin by brushing aside Ukraine’s desires to join Nato and restore its control over Russian-occupied land.

“The practical reality is that there’s going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees, those are just fundamental basics,” Waltz said today, noting that Trump was “determined to move very quickly”.

The Kremlin said any deal should “take into account the possibility of disputing Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s legitimacy” after the Ukrainian president’s term expired last year. Ukraine is under martial law and says it can only hold an election after the fighting stops.

Earlier this week, Zelenskyy said he had not been informed of the talks in Saudi Arabia and that Kyiv “cannot recognise . . . any agreements about us without us”.

Asked what concessions Moscow would make, Rubio said today that any such step would result from “hard, difficult diplomacy”, adding that “no one is being sidelined here”.

Meanwhile, Europe is rushing to respond as the EU demands to be involved in mapping out the continent’s future security architecture. 

European leaders held an emergency summit in Paris yesterday, where the countries clashed over sending troops to Ukraine in a postwar scenario. Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow was “categorically opposed” to a European peacekeeping deployment.

“For Putin, the cold war and its goals never ended: to subvert Nato, to split the US and Europe, and subdue eastern Europe,” said former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev.

The latest headlines

What we’re hearing

When Peter Navarro was released from federal prison last July, he flew straight to Milwaukee for a rock star moment at the Republican National Convention.

The Harvard-trained economist who served four months in prison for defying a congressional subpoena is now Maga royalty, with prime placement in Donald Trump’s court. The president allows Navarro broad leeway over trade policy, and refers to him as “my Peter”.

“There is a clear premium put on loyalty in this administration,” one Washington lobbyist told the FT’s Aime Williams. “And there’s no doubting, whatsoever, Navarro’s loyalty to Trump — that’s why he’ll always have a lot of influence.”

Navarro is the one planning and waging Trump’s trade wars and he’s up against far less internal opposition than he was during the president’s first term.

Today, Navarro is working closely with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, and Jamieson Greer, the president’s pick for trade representative, according to people familiar with the administration’s inner workings.

An ex-Democrat who, like Trump, hasn’t always been loyal to the Republican party, Navarro is often described as a “trade hawk” long known for his protectionist streak and hostility to China.

“He’s a guy who basically sees an existential threat to the US economically, militarily, geopolitically from China” and “is super focused on that”, said one person who has observed him for decades. 

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