The Ukrainian leader said Kiev will not recognize deals made behind its back

Kiev will not take part in the US-Russian negotiations in Riyadh and considers them meaningless, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said.  

The teams led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet on Tuesday in what will be the first such high-profile talks about Ukraine since 2022. 

"Ukraine will not participate," Zelensky told reporters on Monday, adding that Kiev "didn't know anything" about the upcoming talks. 

"Ukraine considers any negotiations about Ukraine that are being held without Ukraine as having no results," he said. "We will not recognize such agreements."

Zelensky insisted that his own visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday has "no connection" to the meeting between US and Russian negotiators the same day. "The visit to the region was planned long before the US decided to meet Russia there," he said, as quoted by Politico.

Putin's top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, confirmed on Monday that the negotiations with Americans will not involve third parties. Speaking to journalists on the tarmac in Riyadh, he said that the talks aim to lay the groundwork for ending the Ukraine conflict and serve as a step toward "real normalization" of relations with the US. 

While the Biden administration maintained unconditional military and financial support for Kiev, Trump rejected his predecessor's campaign to "isolate" Russia on the global stage and promised to end the conflict as soon as possible through a lasting ceasefire. 

Ukrainian and EU officials said they felt blindsided by Trump's phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12. They also criticized Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for ruling out NATO membership for Kiev and refusing to commit to the restoration of Ukraine's pre-2014 borders. 

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last week, Hegseth said that the Pentagon will not commit troops as part of any security guarantees that could be offered to Kiev. He added that, should peacekeepers be deployed in Ukraine, they would not be protected by NATO's collective defense mechanism. 

Moscow has insisted that a peace settlement must address the "root causes" of the conflict, including Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month that Zelensky, instead of "empty words," must demonstrate willingness to hold good-faith negotiations. President Vladimir Putin reiterated last month that he does not consider Zelensky legitimate because his five-year presidential term expired in May 2024 and no new elections were called due to martial law.