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MUNICH — Senior Trump administration officials are heading to Saudi Arabia to start peace talks with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, according to a Republican lawmaker and two U.S. officials familiar with the plan.
National security adviser Mike Waltz will join Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, the president’s Middle East envoy, in the coming days to start talks on ending the war.
However, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine-Russia talks, retired General Keith Kellogg, will not be in attendance, the officials said.
The officials also said there are no plans for representatives from other major European powers to join the talks. That could rankle NATO allies which have publicly urged President Donald Trump to ensure they have a seat at the negotiating table.
The meeting could mark a major moment in Trump’s quest for a peace process, and would also mark the first major meeting of Russian and Ukrainian representatives since the onset of the war in 2022.
Mike McCaul , a Republican lawmaker from Texas, confirmed the plans for Waltz and Witkoff to join Rubio in Saudi Arabia to start talks between the two warring sides during an interview at the POLITICO Pub on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Two U.S. officials, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiation matters, confirmed the plans but did not elaborate on other details about the meetings, including which Ukrainian or Russian negotiators would take part. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian government and the State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Trump on Wednesday told reporters he expects to hold a face-to-face meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia. “We ultimately expect to meet,” he said. “We’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something something done.”
At the Munich conference, top European officials stressed Ukraine must be directly involved in any talks between Trump and Putin.
“There will only be peace if Ukraine’s sovereignty is secured,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the conference on Saturday. “A dictated peace will therefore never find our support.”
McCaul, who is former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed. “The president wants peace. But it’s got to be a deal where the Ukrainians are at the table in this deal now,” he said.
Hundreds of top foreign leaders and national security officials flocked to Munich for the annual security conference. The gathering underscored deep unease and anxiety among Europeans over future American commitment to the transatlantic alliance under Trump, laid bare after a fiery speech by U.S. Vice President JD Vance that shocked many attendees.
European officials and U.S. lawmakers have stressed that any peace deal must be negotiated in a way that doesn’t simply pause the fighting and allow Russia to rearm and regroup to launch a new invasion in the future.
Ahead of the conference, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth excluded the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO as part of peace negotiations, and also ruled out American troops or NATO’s collective defense provision being extended to any future peacekeeping force. Those comments drew fire even from a top Republican lawmaker, and Hegseth later partly walked the comments back.
The possibility of excluding Ukraine and European allies from potential peace talks has created unease among diplomats on the continent, but some see the complaints as indicative of the power imbalance between Washington and Europe.
“If you have to insist you’re relevant, it likely means you’re not,” one European diplomat said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he does not trust that Putin is ready for genuine peace talks following three years of war. “Trump said to me that Putin wants to stop the war. I said to him ‘Putin is a liar. I hope that you will pressure him because I don’t trust him,’” Zelenskyy said at Munich.
Trump administration officials have floated a plan to Zelenskyy to hand over part of Ukraine’s stock of rare earth minerals in exchange for continued U.S. military support.
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