Russia, US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war, improving ties in landmark Riyadh talks

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, second left, meets with Saudi FM Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, center left, Saudi National Security Advisor Mosaad bin Mohammad Al-Aiban, center right, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov,(R), and Russian policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, second right. Also in meeting are US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. (SPA)
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Updated 21 February 2025
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Russia, US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war, improving ties in landmark Riyadh talks

  • Saudi Arabia hosted the talks between Russia and the US as part of the Kingdom’s efforts to enhance security and peace in the world

RIYADH: Russia and the US have agreed to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday. 

Rubio said that the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks, and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.
He stressed, however, that the talks — which were hosted by Saudi Arabia and also attended by his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov — marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needs to be done down the road.
No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which came as the beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago.
Improving Russian-US relations
Ties between Russia and the US have fallen to their lowest level in decades during the war. Both embassies have been hit hard by expulsions of large numbers of diplomats over the course of several years, and the US, along with European nations, imposed a raft of sanctions on Russia. The allies have repeatedly expanded the measures to damage Moscow’s economy.
“Should this conflict come to an acceptable end, the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians geopolitically on issues of common interest and frankly, economically on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term,” Rubio said.
His comments were further evidence of the remarkable US reversal on Russia after years in which Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, led international efforts to isolate Moscow.
Tuesday’s meeting was meant to pave the way for a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the talks wrapped, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told Russia’s Channel One that no date has been set yet for that summit but that it was “unlikely” to take place next week.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Lavrov said that in his view, “the conversation was very useful.” He mentioned the same three goals as Rubio and said that Washington and Moscow agreed to appoint representatives to carry out “regular consultations” on Ukraine.
“We not only listened, but also heard each other,” Lavrov. “And I have reason to believe that the American side has started to better understand our position, which we have once again outlined in detail, using specific examples, based on President Putin’s repeated speeches.”
The meeting marked the most extensive contact between the two countries since Moscow’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion. Lavrov and then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked briefly on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in India nearly two years ago, but tensions remained high.

Saudi Arabia hosted the talks on Ukraine between Russia and the US as part of its efforts to enhance global peace and security, the Kingdom’s foreign ministry announced earlier on Tuesday.

A statement released by the Kingdom’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that under the directive of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: “Saudi Arabia hosts today, Tuesday, in the city of Riyadh, talks between the Russian Federation and the United States of America, as part of the Kingdom’s efforts to enhance security and peace in the world.”

The meeting was attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the presence of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Saudi Minister of State and National Security advisor Musaed Al-Aiban.

The talks between US and Russian officials in Riyadh were the most significant to date between the two former Cold War foes on ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The conversation could pave the way for a summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

But the talks in the Saudi capital underscored the rapid pace of US efforts to halt the conflict, less than a month after Trump took office and six days after he spoke by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin.




Russian foreign ministry officials said NATO must abandon plans for Ukraine to join the alliance. (X.com/RFM)

Lavrov said Russia told the United States it opposed any NATO member sending troops to Ukraine as part of a ceasefire, whether under a national flag or that of the European Union.
“This is unacceptable to us, of course,” Lavrov added.
The two sides also agreed to ensure the “prompt appointment” of ambassadors to each other’s countries, the foreign minister said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin relieved his former ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, last year but did not name a replacement.
His US counterpart Donald Trump is yet to appoint his ambassador for Moscow.
Lavrov also said the United States expressed an interest in lifting sanctions on Moscow.
“There was strong interest in removing artificial barriers to the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation,” he said.
The two sides agreed on a process for starting negotiations on ending the fighting in Ukraine, Lavrov added.
“The United States side will announce who will represent Washington, and as soon as we know the name and position of the appropriate representative, we will, as President Putin told President Trump, immediately designate our participant in this process.”

While the US and Russians were meeting in Saudi Arabia, Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Ankara.
Zelensky flew into the Turkish capital from the United Arab Emirates late on Monday, saying on Telegram he would discuss prisoner exchanges and other issues with Erdogan.
The talks at Erdogan’s presidential palace, which began around 11:15 GMT, came several hours after the meeting in Saudi Arabia.




Zelensky arrived in Turkiye late on Monday. (AFP)

Zelensky last visited Turkiye in March 2024.
Top Erdogan aide Fahrettin Altun on Monday said the pair would discuss how to “further strengthen cooperation” between their two nations.
NATO member Turkey has sought to maintain good relations with its warring Black Sea neighbours, with Erdogan pitching himself as a key go-between and possible peacemaker between the two.
Ankara has provided drones for Ukraine but shied away from Western-led sanctions on Moscow.
Alongside Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Turkiye has played a role in brokering several prisoner swap deals between Russia and Ukraine which have seen hundreds of prisoners returning home despite the ongoing conflict.

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Defense chief Hegseth shared war plans in second Signal chat, NYT reports

Updated 21 April 2025
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Defense chief Hegseth shared war plans in second Signal chat, NYT reports

  • The Trump administration has aggressively pursued leaks, an effort that has been enthusiastically embraced by Hegseth at the Pentagon

WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of a March attack on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, the New York Times reported on Sunday, raising more questions about his use of an unclassified messaging system to share highly-sensitive security details.
Hegseth allegedly shared the same details of the attack that were revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat on the Signal app by mistake, in an embarrassing incident involving all of President Donald Trump’s most senior national security officials.
The Times, citing four sources familiar with the message group, said that second chat included details of the schedule of the air strikes.
Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, has also reportedly attended sensitive meetings with foreign military counterparts, the Wall Street Journal has separately reported.
Revelations of another use of Signal for classified information come as one of Hegseth’s leading advisers, Dan Caldwell, was escorted from the Pentagon last week after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Department of Defense, a US official told Reuters.
Following Caldwell’s departure, less senior officials Darin Selnick, who recently became Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, who was chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, were put on administrative leave, officials said.
The Trump administration has aggressively pursued leaks, an effort that has been enthusiastically embraced by Hegseth at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon was not immediately available for comment.


Trump says he hopes Russia, Ukraine to strike ‘deal this week’

Updated 21 April 2025
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Trump says he hopes Russia, Ukraine to strike ‘deal this week’

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Sunday that he hoped for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal “this week,” promising “big business with the United States” for both combatants if a truce is signed.
“Hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week,” Trump posted to his Truth Social network, without giving details of any progress in peace talks Washington has sought to push forward since he took over from Joe Biden in January.
 


Congo suspends Kabila’s political party

Updated 20 April 2025
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Congo suspends Kabila’s political party

  • Joseph Kabila, who was president for 18 years up to 2019, remains head of his People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, the Interior Ministry said

KINSHASA: The Democratic Republic of Congo government said it suspended the political party of former President Joseph Kabila days after security services raided his properties.

“This decision follows the overt activism” of Kabila, who was president for 18 years up to 2019 and remains head of his People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, PPRD, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

PPRD activities “are suspended across all the national territory,” the statement said.

There was no immediate reaction from the party.

Current leader President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Kabila of preparing “an insurrection” and backing an alliance that includes the M23 armed group that is fighting government forces in eastern DR Congo.

According to a spokesman for his family, Kabila, 53, left the country before the last presidential election in 2023.

But in early April, in a message relayed by his staff, he said he would return on an unspecified date because the country was “in peril.”

There are unconfirmed suggestions that he will arrive, or is already in, the eastern city of Goma.

The family spokesman said on Thursday that security services mounted raids on Kabila’s main property, a farm east of Kinshasa, and on a compound belonging to the family in the capital.

The Interior Ministry statement accused Kabila’s party of keeping “a guilty, or even complicit, silence” over “the Rwandan war of aggression.”

Kinshasa, UN experts, and several international powers have said M23 is backed by Rwanda, which denies the charge.

The armed group is at the center of a new surge in conflict in eastern DR Congo, having taken the key cities of Goma and Bukavu.

The DR Congo ministry statement said Kabila has maintained an “ambiguous attitude” on the M23 rebellion, which he “has never condemned.”

It criticized Kabila’s “deliberate choice” to enter the country through the city of Goma, under the “control of the enemy.”

A separate statement from the country’s Justice Ministry said the chief prosecutor had been asked to start legal action against Kabila for “his direction participation” in M23.


Exec linked to Bangkok building collapse arrested

Updated 20 April 2025
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Exec linked to Bangkok building collapse arrested

BANGKOK: Thai authorities said they have arrested a Chinese executive at a company that was building a Bangkok skyscraper which collapsed in a major earthquake, leaving dozens dead.

The 30-story tower was reduced to an immense pile of rubble when a 7.7-magnitude quake struck neighboring Myanmar last month, killing 47 people at the construction site and leaving another 47 missing.

Justice Minister Tawee Sodsong told a news conference Saturday that a Thai court had issued arrest warrants for four individuals, including three Thai nationals, at China Railway No.10 for breaching the Foreign Business Act.

The Department of Special Investigation, which is under the justice ministry, said in a statement Saturday that one of the four had been arrested — a Chinese “company representative” who they named as Zhang.

China Railway No.10 was part of a joint venture with an Italian-Thai firm to build the State Audit Office tower before its collapse.

Zhang is listed as a 49-percent shareholder in the firm, while the three Thai citizens have a 51-percent stake in the company.

But Tawee told journalists that “we have evidence ... that the three Thais were holding shares for other foreign independents.”

The Foreign Business Act says that foreigners may hold no more than 49 percent of shares in a company.

Separately, Tawee said several investigations related to the collapse were ongoing, including over the possibility of bid rigging and the use of fake signatures of engineers in construction supervisor contracts.

Earlier this month Thai safety officials said testing of steel rebars — struts used to reinforce concrete — from the site has found that some of the metal used was substandard.

The skyscraper was the only major building in the capital to fall in the catastrophic March 28 earthquake that has killed more than 3,700 people in Thailand and neighboring Myanmar.


Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of breaching Easter truce

Updated 1 min 23 sec ago
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Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of breaching Easter truce

  • Ukraine’s forces reported 2,935 violations of Russia’s own Easter ceasefire vow, Zelensky said
  • The 30-hour truce had been meant to start Saturday to mark the religious holiday

KRAMATORSK: Russia and Ukraine on Sunday accused each other of violating an Easter truce announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The 30-hour truce had been meant to start Saturday to mark the religious holiday, but Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of keeping up its attacks on the front line.

Ukraine’s forces reported 2,935 violations of Russia’s own Easter ceasefire vow, Zelensky said early on Monday.
“The nature of Ukrainian actions will continue to be mirrored: we will respond to silence with silence, our strikes will be to protect against Russian strikes,” he  said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Zelensky also renewed a proposal for a 30-day truce.
Moscow said it had “repelled” assaults by Ukraine and accused Kyiv of launching hundreds of drones and shells, causing civilian casualties.
“Despite the announcement of the Easter truce, Ukrainian units at night made attempts to attack” Russia’s positions in the Donetsk region, its defense ministry added.
Russian troops had “strictly observed the ceasefire,” the defense ministry insisted.
Rescue services in the eastern town of Kostyantynivka said they had recovered the bodies of a man and a woman from the ruins of building hit the previous day by Russian shelling.
The Russian-appointed mayor of Gorlovka in occupied Donetsk, Ivan Prikhodko, said two civilians had been wounded there, without giving details.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and now occupies around 20 percent of the country.
Putin’s order to halt all combat over the Easter weekend came after months of efforts by US President Donald Trump to get the war rivals to agree to a ceasefire.
But on Friday, Trump threatened to withdraw from talks if no progress was made.
Ukrainian soldiers told AFP that they had noticed a lull in fighting.
A drone unit commander said that Russia’s activity had “significantly decreased both in Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions,” combat zones in the south and northeast where the unit is active.
“Several assaults were recorded, but those were solitary incidents involving small groups,” the commander told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Fewer guys (soldiers) will die today.”
Russian “artillery is not working. it is quiet compared to a regular day,” Sergiy, a junior lieutenant fighting in the Sumy border region, wrote to AFP in a message.
Ukrainian troops “are on the defensive,” he added. “If the enemy doesn’t move forward, they don’t shoot.”
AFP journalists monitoring in eastern Ukraine heard fewer explosions than usual and saw no smoke on the horizon.
Putin announced a truce from 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) Saturday to midnight Sunday Moscow time (2100 GMT), saying it was motivated by “humanitarian reasons.”
Zelensky responded that Ukraine was ready to follow suit and proposed extending the truce for 30 days to “give peace a chance.”
But he said Sunday that Russia “has not yet responded to this.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin had given no order to extend the truce.
In Kyiv, as Easter Sunday bells rang out, people doubted Russia’s good faith.
“They’ve already broken their promise,” said 38-year-old Olga Grachova, who works in marketing. “Unfortunately, we cannot trust Russia today.”
Natalia, a 41-year-old medic, said of Zelensky’s 30-day proposal: “Everything we offer, unfortunately, remains only our offers. Nobody responds to them.”
People in Moscow welcomed an Easter truce and hoped for more progress toward an end to the war.
“We dreamt of course that peace would come by Easter. Let it come soon,” said Svetlana, a 34-year-old housewife.
“I think that this awful thing will end at some point, but not soon,” said Irina Volkova, a 73-year-old pensioner.
“All is not going well for us in Ukraine,” she added. “People are dying, our guys are dying.”
Moscow said this weekend that it had now recovered 99.5 percent of its Kursk region, which Ukrainian troops occupied in a surprise offensive in August.