When President Trump stated on Wednesday that he may quickly meet together with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to debate an finish to the almost three-year warfare in Ukraine, he named what could have appeared like an unlikely venue for the talks.
“We anticipate that he’ll come right here, and I’ll go there and we’re going to fulfill additionally in all probability in Saudi Arabia the primary time,” Mr. Trump advised reporters within the Oval Workplace. “We’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we will get one thing achieved.”
Mr. Trump cited each his and Mr. Putin’s relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, as a cause for selecting the Gulf nation for his or her first assembly since he regained the White Home. “We all know the crown prince, and I believe it’d be an excellent place to be,” Mr. Trump stated.
Saudi Arabia has more and more performed the function of mediator within the Russia-Ukraine warfare, together with its neighbor the United Arab Emirates.
For Prince Mohammed, mediating the warfare presents a possibility to solidify his standing as a worldwide chief with affect that extends past the Center East. It additionally allows him to place himself as a key middleman able to bringing highly effective nations to the desk, regardless of his persevering with struggles to finish Saudi Arabia’s involvement within the devastating warfare in Yemen.
In September 2022, Prince Mohammed helped to dealer the discharge of 10 prisoners from numerous nations as a part of a broader change course of between Russia and Ukraine. Later, in Might 2023, he invited Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to talk at a gathering of Arab leaders within the Saudi metropolis of Jeddah, the place Mr. Zelensky referred to as on Center Jap nations to assist Ukraine towards Russia.
Later that summer time, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine collectively hosted closed-door talks in Jeddah geared toward ending the warfare, attended by diplomats from over 40 nations, although not from Russia.
In August 2024, Saudi Arabia performed an influential function in negotiating the largest U.S.-Russian prisoner swap because the Chilly Warfare, and Mr. Putin personally thanked the crown prince.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s particular envoy to the Center East, Steve Witkoff, stated that Prince Mohammed had performed an “instrumental” function in mediating the release of Marc Fogel, an American trainer who was arrested on expenses of bringing medical marijuana into Russia in August 2021.
“He has a really sturdy friendship with President Trump, and behind the scenes he was encouraging and pushing and searching for the proper consequence, and it was useful, it actually was,” Mr. Witkoff said of the Saudi crown prince’s function.
Like many nations within the Center East, Saudi Arabia has made it clear that it doesn’t search to take sides within the warfare. It has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine even whereas cultivating shut ties with Russia.
The Trump administration can also be seeking to the resource-rich Gulf nations, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to play a postwar function in Gaza. Mr. Trump has been pushing a proposal to switch all two million Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip after which rebuild the enclave because the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Earlier this week, King Abdullah of Jordan stated that there could be a meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, involving Prince Mohammed and others to debate Mr. Trump’s Gaza proposal earlier than Arab leaders meet for an emergency Arab League summit in Cairo on Feb. 27.
