US-Russia talks to resume in Saudi Arabia as Zelenskyy calls for pressure on Putin

LONDON — American and Russian negotiators were set to meet again in Saudi Arabia on Monday as the White House continued its push for a ceasefire and eventual peace deal to end Moscow’s 3-year-old war on Ukraine.

A proposed pause on strikes targeting energy infrastructure is expected to be among the topics of discussion, with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy having already indicated their support — at least in principle — for the plan.

Russia’s state-run Tass news agency reported that the American and Russian teams began the behind-closed-doors talks in Riyadh on Monday morning.

President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who has been central to talks with both Moscow and Kyiv — expressed hope for progress on Sunday, telling Fox News that the president’s “philosophy of peace through strength brings people to the table to clear up misconceptions and to get peace deals done.”

“I’m not sure how anyone would expect an end to a conflict when you’re not communicating,” Witkoff said.

The U.S.-Russia meeting on Monday comes on the heels of a meeting between the American and Ukrainian teams in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday. Zelenskyy said Sunday evening he had been briefed on the “quite useful” discussion by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who took part.

“But no matter what we’re discussing with our partners right now, Putin must be pushed to issue a real order to stop the strikes — because the one who brought this war must be the one to take it back,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Moscow’s continued missile and drone attacks across the country. Ukraine has also continued its own long-range drone strikes into Russia.

But other remarks made by Witkoff over the weekend again piqued concerns in Ukraine and elsewhere that the Trump administration is aligning itself with false or misleading Russian narratives about its decades-long campaigns of meddling and aggression in Ukraine.

Discussing the Ukrainian regions partially occupied and claimed annexed by Russia since 2022 — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — plus Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, Witkoff told Tucker Carlson, “They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”

Witkoff did not acknowledge that the supposed referenda held in those territories — whether in 2014 in the case of Crimea or 2022 in the other regions — were widely dismissed by Western powers, human rights organizations and international bodies as fraudulent and illegitimate.

In September 2022, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. “does not, and will never, recognize any of the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it’s seized by force and now purports to incorporate into Russia.”

Witkoff also touted the apparent warm relationship between Trump and Putin, telling Carlson that the Russian leader claimed to have prayed for “his friend” Trump after the assassination attempt against the president in July 2024. Putin also gave Witkoff a portrait of Trump as a gift, he said.

“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to reestablish through a simple word called communication, which many people would say I shouldn’t have had because Putin is a bad guy,” Witkoff said. “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy.”

Deadly cross-border drone attacks continued through the weekend. On Sunday night into Monday morning, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 99 drones into the country, of which 93 were either shot down or lost in flight without causing damage.

Russian air defense shot down 28 drones fired into Russian territory by Ukraine, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

ABC News’ Yuriy Zaliznyak, Victoria Beaule, Anna Sergeeva and Guy Davies contributed to this report.