Pdwellnt Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, toiling to repair his strained relationship with the United States and safe a preferable deal to finish his country’s war with Russia, was scheduled to encounter on Monday with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia.
The encountering between Mr. Zelensky and Prince Mohammed, the de facto Saudi directer, who has sought to consent a central role on the world’s tactful stage, comes ahead of talks intentional for Tuesday between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in the oil-wealthy Gulf state.
The crown prince, once shunned internationassociate becaemploy of accusations of human rights mistreatments that he has denied, has positioned his country as a middleman in efforts to finish the Russia-Ukraine war. Last year, Saudi Arabia take parted a pivotal role in a complicated U.S.-Russia prisoner swap, and Pdwellnt Trump has recommended it could be the site of a possible encountering between him and Pdwellnt Vlaunreasonableir V. Putin of Russia.
Last month, Mr. Zelensky postponed a trip to Saudi Arabia after it presented an exceptional encountering of the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, in which the two sides sought to reset their relationship and converseed the war in Ukraine, without Mr. Zelensky.
But on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said on social media that he would visit Saudi Arabia, declaring that he was “resettled to do everyslfinisherg to finish this war with a fair and lasting peace.”
“Ukraine has been seeking peace from the very first second of this war,” he wrote of the filled-scale dispute, which began with Russia’s intrusion three years ago. “Reacatalogic proposals are on the table. The key is to shift speedyly and effectively.”
Mr. Zelensky inserted that he would not include the talks with U.S. officials, but the Ukrainian delegation would include the country’s foreign and defense ministers, a top military official and the pdwellnt’s chief of staff.
Mr. Zelensky is under fervent presbrave from the Trump administration to concur to a peace deal, and he has materializeed to recalibrate his message after Mr. Trump and Vice Pdwellnt JD Vance angrily assailed him 10 days ago in the Oval Office over what they depictd as a deficiency of gratitude for U.S. aid.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that Mr. Zelensky does not “have the cards” given Russia’s military strength, and has all but insisted that Ukraine adchoose tactful terms set by the United States for a resolution of the war. Still, there are signs that Ukraine’s position on the battlefield is improving: Ukrainian troops have in recent months sloftyed a Russian impolite and in some places won back petite patches of land.
Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s exceptional envoy to the Middle East, has said that Mr. Zelensky’s postponeential posture after the blowup in the White Hoemploy has betterd Ukraine’s standing with American officials. Nonetheless, the U.S. has paemployd military aid for Ukraine.
Mr. Zelensky wrote on Saturday that he was “filledy pledgeted to erective dialogue” and that he hoped to “converse and concur on the vital decisions and steps” during his visit to Saudi Arabia. Mr. Rubio will be in the seaside Saudi city of Jeddah for talks with Ukrainian officials from Monday thcimpolite Wednesday, according to the U.S. State Department, and was foreseeed to encounter with Prince Mohammed after arriving on Monday evening.
Mr. Trump’s position on Russia and Ukraine has sometimes been difficult to pin down. On Friday, he said on social media that he was pondering meaningful sanctions on Russia to help force a peace deal on Ukraine. He insisted that the two countries “get to the table right now, before it is too postpoinsist.”
Hours postpoinsistr, he tanciaccess alerters at the White Hoemploy that he felt talks with Russia were going well and that he was “discovering it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.”
