Ukraine and Russia delegations due in Riyadh on Monday for separate US talks

Ukraine will have a delegation in Riyadh on the same day the US is holding ceasefire talks there with a Russian negotiating team led by a secretive former FSB chief who played a key role in planning Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the delegation would meet with US representatives on Monday and supply a list of energy infrastructure that would be off-limits for strikes by the Russian military. The US representatives would then meet the Russian negotiating team, Zelenskyy said on Thursday.
The Ukrainian announcement indicates the US could shuttle between the two sides to try to achieve Donald Trump’s goal of a quick ceasefire. But both Russia and Ukraine have already disputed the White House’s accounts of their earlier talks with the US president, indicating Trump may have misrepresented the progress of the talks – and his chances of striking a quick deal to halt the war.
Related: Starmer warns Putin of ‘severe consequences’ if he breaches peace deal
On Thursday, Zelenskyy contradicted Trump by denying he had discussed a US plan to take over Ukrainian power plants as part of a peace deal, saying that they “belong to the people of Ukraine”.
Trump had announced on Wednesday that US ownership of the plants “would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure”.
Zelenskyy denied there had been any discussion with Trump about privatising the plants. “If the Americans want to take the station from the Russians and they want to invest there and modernise it, that is a completely different issue,” he said. “We are open to discuss it, but the issue of property we definitely did not discuss with President Trump.”
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