Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday criticised US-Russia talks for excluding Kyiv, saying efforts to end the war must be “fair” and involve European countries including Türkiye.
His remarks came after Washington and Moscow said they would name teams to negotiate a path to ending the war in Ukraine, during their first high-level official talks since Russia invaded nearly three years ago.
The Ukrainian leader spoke after a nearly three-hour meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“Ukraine, Europe in a broad sense — and this includes the European Union, Türkiye, and the UK — should be involved in conversations and the development of the necessary security guarantees with America regarding the fate of our part of the world,” Zelensky said.
Any efforts to broker an end to the conflict should be “fair”, he said, slamming the US-Russia talks in Riyadh earlier on Tuesday and reiterating his opposition to “decisions without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine”.
He said he had not been invited to the Riyadh talks and was postponing his own trip to the Saudi capital, where he had been expected on Wednesday, pushing the date back to March 10.
Trump’s overhaul of US policy on Russia has triggered fears Washington could be preparing to force Kyiv into a settlement on Moscow’s terms.
Those concerns were heightened by the Riyadh talks when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met to discuss European security and Ukraine — without any representatives from Kyiv or Brussels.