MOSCOW (AFP): Russia said on Tuesday its talks with the United States in Saudi Arabia were “not bad” but that it was difficult to tell whether their positions were getting any closer.
The long-awaited meeting between the two nuclear-armed superpowers came after three years of tensions over the Ukraine conflict, with both sides setting out their approaches to settling the fighting ahead of talks.
“It’s hard to say that they are getting closer, but we have been talking about it,” Kremlin aide and Russian negotiator Yuri Ushakov said when asked about whether Washington’s and Moscow’s positions were converging.
“There was a very serious conversation on all the issues we wanted to touch on.”
He added that it was still not possible to talk about a date for a presidential summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
When asked whether the two sides discussed Ukraine, Ushakov said: “Yes, we discussed and outlined our principled approaches and agreed that separate teams of negotiators on this topic will be in contact in due time.”
The negotiations lasted four and a half hours, Russian state media reported.
Among those taking part in the talks were US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Moscow’s economic negotiator for the talks told state TV the dialogue was “very constructive.”
“We all got to know each other much better… There were a lot of jokes,” he said.
