Rubio Begins Peace Talks Without Ukraine [VIDEO]

The Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration launched talks with Russia on Tuesday over the war in Ukraine, a turning point in Washington’s handling of Europe’s most destructive conflict in decades and a sign of the U.S. president’s willingness to sideline allies in his determination to impose a swift peace.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s discussions with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Saudi capital, the first such high-level U.S.-Russian encounter since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, marked a departure from an earlier U.S. insistence that Ukraine must lead any negotiations. The meeting also is part of an approach that appears likely to deliver an agreement unfavorable to Kyiv.

U.S. officials have downplayed the significance of Kyiv’s exclusion, depicting the meeting as preliminary to explore the prospects for later negotiations that would include Kyiv and to pave the way for an expected Trump-Putin summit. But it marked a sharp break with the “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” mantra embraced by President Joe Biden and his Western allies.

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