“I saw that someone said that there would be a meeting in Saudi Arabia. I do not know what it is,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
On the prospect of talks without Ukraine at the table, he said: “Well, this is not a serious conversation, it seems to me.”
One Ukrainian official at the conference expressed exasperation at the news, saying: “I don’t know where this came from, or what they expect to be the outcome of these talks where we are not invited.”
And back in Kyiv, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top Zelenskyy adviser, was even more blunt. “There is nothing on the negotiating table that would be worth discussing,” he said. “Russia is not ready for negotiations.”
Michael McCaul, a Republican House member from Texas, stunned conference-goers when he announced during an event at the POLITICO Pub on the sidelines of the conference that the meeting would be held in the coming days. And that it would include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Decoding Trump
The news — and confusion around it — has further fanned the flames of anxiety across Europe that President Donald Trump could negotiate a peace deal on Ukraine over the heads of Kyiv and other Western allies.
