Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will speak in a television interview today about some aspects of the Russian-American consultations that took place on Monday at the “Ritz-Carlton“ hotel in Riyadh, wrote the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova on her Telegram channel.
The talks lasted more than 12 hours. The Russian delegation was headed by the chairman of the Federation Council's international relations committee, Grigory Karasin, and the adviser to the director of the Federal Security Service, Sergei Beseda. The US delegation included Andrew Peake, the senior director for Europe at the National Security Council, Michael Anton, the director of policy planning at the State Department, as well as assistants to the special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg and the national security adviser Mike Walz.
The US and Russia have agreed to issue a joint statement on yesterday's talks, BTA reported.
It is assumed that the central topic of the closed-door meeting in Riyadh was ensuring a ceasefire as a first step towards ending the war in Ukraine, which has been going on for more than three years.
Karasin said yesterday that "not all negotiations should end with long documents and agreements".
Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS that no documents were planned.
Karasin stressed that it was important for the US and Russia to be in constant contact and understand each other's points of view. "We are successfully dealing with this", he stressed.
US representatives already held initial talks with Ukraine's negotiating team on Sunday, which Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov called "constructive and informative". Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian-US meeting would be followed by another round of talks between US and Ukrainian representatives.