Putin aide reveals date of next Russia-US talks in Riyadh
A new round of negotiations between Russian and US officials will take place in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on Monday, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov has said.
Senator Grigory Karasin and Sergey Beseda, who is an aide to the director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Aleksandr Bortnikov, will be heading Moscow’s delegation at the upcoming talks, Ushakov announced on Thursday.
“They are truly experienced negotiators, who are well versed in international issues,” he added.
A team of US experts that will take part in the meeting in Saudi Arabia has also been put together, Ushakov said.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz announced that he’d had a phone call with Ushakov, during which they “agreed that our technical teams will meet in Riyadh in the coming days.”
Putin’s aide has confirmed that “such a conversation did take place.”
According to Ushakov, the meeting in Riyadh will be mainly dedicated to the discussion of “the prospects for the possible implementation of the well-known initiative concerning the safety of navigation in the Black Sea.”
During their phone call last Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Trump's proposal to introduce a “maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea,” with the two leaders agreeing to initiate negotiations to further refine the details of such an arrangement.
“We hope that the consultations on Monday will be productive,” Putin’s aide noted.
Ushakov also said that he and Waltz speak on the phone “regularly” and that those communications are “quite beneficial for both sides.”
The 75-year-old Senator Grigory Karasin, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Russian Federal Council, has served as Russia’s deputy foreign minister on two occasions and was Moscow’s ambassador to the UK between 2000 and 2005.
Before becoming Bortnikov’s aide last year, Colonel-General Sergey Beseda was head of the department of operational data and international relations at the FSB.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky has said that Washington will also hold a separate meeting with Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia next Monday. He added that the US-Ukraine talks are set to take place either before the meeting with Russia or in parallel.
