President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Saudi Arabian royalty next Monday, a day before planned peace talks in Riyadh between senior Ukrainian and US officials. Similarly, US President Donald Trump said that he, too, would be in Saudi Arabia around the same time, ostensibly to work on a “business deal”.
Zelensky said his trip was to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “After that, my team will stay in Saudi Arabia to work with our American partners. Ukraine is most interested in peace,” he wrote on social media platform X.
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The US delegation is reported to be essentially the same group that met earlier in the year with Russian officials for initial peace talks: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
The Ukrainian team will be led by Zelensky’s top aide, Adriy Yermak.
The scope of the meeting is also unclear, though it is likely related to the signing of a deal for the US to obtain valuable Ukrainian minerals, which went pear-shaped at the end of last month when Zelensky and Trump met in the White House in what turned into an ambush of the Ukrainian president, as Trump and his henchman, Vice President JD Vance, laid into him.
The US has since suspended military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, although Trump has signaled that Washington might restore aid if Ukraine signs the minerals deal.
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The Norwegian prime minister called the additional funding a “solid contribution to peace and stability in Europe.”
Trump said Thursday he planned to visit Saudi Arabia at what is believed to be a time concurrent with the peace talks, suggesting a deal for major investment from the kingdom.
Trump, asked if he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia, confirmed his intention to visit the oil-rich Gulf nation but suggested that business was the main motive.
“I’m going to Saudi Arabia,” Trump told reporters, without confirming a date.
“I said, I’ll go if you pay a trillion dollars, $1 trillion to American companies over a four-year period, of a trillion dollars,” he said.
“They’ve agreed to do that, so I’m going to be going there.”
The trip to Saudi Arabia would be Trump’s foreign visit in this, his second presidential term.
He said recently that he decided to visit Saudi Arabia rather than Britain because the Arab kingdom promised to buy $450 billion worth of US products, AFP reported. Trump has cultivated close business ties with Saudi Arabia, with the Trump Organization in December announcing a Trump Tower in Jeddah.
In his last term, Trump boasted of shielding Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from consequences over the killing of US-based Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with the president citing the importance of Saudi purchases of US weapons.