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Volodymyr Zelenskyy is flying to Saudi Arabia for high-stakes talks with the crown prince, at a time when Ukraine is being squeezed on and off the battlefield.
The Ukrainian president has gone to Riyadh for talks with Mohammed bin Salman, whose government has played a mediating role between Ukraine and Russia, before separate meetings in Saudi Arabia this week between Ukrainian and US officials.
Donald Trump has sought to force Zelenskyy to agree to a deal to end the war with Russia, and last week the US president piled on the pressure by cutting off crucial military assistance and intelligence-sharing.
Russian forces – emboldened after Ukraine lost support from its biggest backer – have seized the moment, launching barrages of ballistic missile attacks while attempting to surround thousands of Ukrainian troops who had maintained a seven-month foothold in the Russian region of Kursk.
On Tuesday, a Ukrainian delegation led by Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, will meet the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other senior White House officials – the first official meeting since a disastrous Oval Office argument between Zelenskyy and Trump.
The White House has framed Trump’s Ukraine policy as intended to achieve a lasting “peace” but the president has focused primarily on pressuring Zelenskyy to hand over his country’s mineral wealth to the US.
After the Oval Office crisis, Zelenskyy sought to patch up ties with the mercurial US leader. The Ukrainian president says he is willing to sign a mineral deal, even though it looks unlikely he will gain US security guarantees that Kyiv sees as vital to prevent a future Russian invasion.
Zelenskyy will not attend Tuesday’s talks but the Ukrainian delegation will include his foreign and defence ministers. “On our side, we are fully committed to constructive dialogue, and we hope to discuss and agree on the necessary decisions and steps,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X. “Realistic proposals are on the table. The key is to move quickly and effectively.”
The Ukrainian side is expected to propose a peace plan that features a halt to drone and missile strikes, as well as a suspension of military activity in the Black Sea. Zelenskyy has said the proposal would be a test of Russia’s commitment to ending the war. So far, however, Vladimir Putin has shown no interest in a ceasefire.Trump said on Sunday that he expected good results out of the upcoming talks and that he would consider ending the suspension of intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.
Ukrainian troops remain under intense pressure. On Monday, the country’s border guard said Russian forces were attempting to create an active fighting zone in the north-eastern region of Sumy, across the border from Kursk.
“We have recorded that in the direction of Novenke, the enemy is still trying to create a zone of active hostilities on the territory of Ukraine, trying to gain a foothold there,” border guard spokesperson Andriy Demchenko told Ukrainian national television.
In Kursk, Russians were also closing in on the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said it had repelled an extraordinary attack by Russian sabotage and assault groups via a gas pipeline. About 100 Russian soldiers spent four days crawling through the nine-mile-long (15km) pipe that leads to Sudzha’s outskirts.
Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medevdev claimed Kyiv’s forces were nearly surrounded and would soon be driven out. “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues,” he posted on Telegram.
Trump suggested this weekend that Ukraine may not be able to survive in the war against Russia, even with support from the US.
In an interview with Fox News, while defending his decision to cut support to Ukraine, he said: “Well, it may not survive anyway.”
Trump also said that Zelenskyy took money from the US under the Biden administration like “candy from a baby”. He repeated his claim that Zelenskyy was not “grateful” but did describe him as “smart” and “tough”.
Reuters contributed to this report
