The news outlets Kommersant and Axios report that senior officials from Russia and the United States plan to meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, February 18, to discuss resolving the war in Ukraine. According to Kommersant, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff will join negotiations in Riyadh.
Sources told Axios that Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov may join the Russian delegation, though it remains unclear who else might represent Moscow. On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Putin was assembling a “team of heavyweights” that include chief Kremlin foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, “spymaster” Sergei Naryshkin, and financier Kirill Dmitriev (who was already instrumental in negotiating the exchange of American schoolteacher Marc Fogel for Russian money launderer Alexander Vinnik.