Washington and Kyiv held brief talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, a day after hours of US-Russia negotiations on halting the fighting in Ukraine ended without any breakthroughs announced.
US President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine launched more than three years ago, and hopes the latest round of talks in the Saudi capital will pave the way for a ceasefire.
Kyiv had earlier this month agreed to a US-proposed unconditional ceasefire but Moscow had turned it down, with Ukraine and its European allies accusing it of not wanting peace.
“The talks are over. All details will be announced later,” a Ukrainian source told a small group of media, including AFP, not long after saying the meeting had begun.
The negotiations between Ukrainian and American officials come after hours of Russian-US meetings that yielded no announcement on any truce.
In Moscow, the Kremlin said the “content” of its talks with the US a day earlier will not be made public, saying it was still “analysing” the results of negotiations with the Americans.
“They are being analysed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“The content of these talks will definitely not be publicised,” he added.
The Kremlin said contacts with Washington would continue but there was no “specific” date for another meeting.
Late on Tuesday, Russian news agencies had reported that Russia and the US plan to release a joint statement on the results of the talks.
There was no sign from Moscow that it would agree to any truce.
Those fresh conversations come as both Russia and Ukraine escalate their attacks on the ground, with Kyiv saying its air defence units had downed 78 out of 139 drones launched by Russia Tuesday.
In Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, officials said the toll from a Russian strike a day earlier climbed to 101 wounded, including 23 children.
The strike hit a residential area in the city near the Russian border as negotiations were taking place in Riyadh.
The local administration in Sumy said 14 adults and 16 children were in hospital, with one adult and one child in “serious condition.”
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of wanting to gain battlefield advantage before agreeing to any ceasefire.
The Kremlin has downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution since rhetoric around a possible halt in fighting escalated with the election of Trump.
A Russian negotiator had said earlier on Tuesday that Moscow would continue “useful” talks with US representatives but would aim to involve the UN and other countries.
Ukraine has repeatedly accused the Kremlin of trying to put off any serious discussion of implementing a halt in hostilities.
“We talked about everything, it was an intense dialogue, not easy, but very useful for us and the Americans,” Grigory Karasin, told the state TASS news agency, adding that “lots of problems were discussed”.
“Of course we are far from solving everything, from being in agreement on all points, but it seems that this type of discussion is very timely,” he said.
“We will continue doing it, adding in the international community, above all the United Nations and certain countries,” Karasin said.
He spoke a day after the US and Russian teams held 12 hours of talks in a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia.
At a previous round of talks this month in Jeddah — days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dressing-down by Trump at the White House — Kyiv agreed to a US-proposed 30-day ceasefire that was subsequently rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Officials are now studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, an agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine’s ports
