Ukraine peace talks proving tricky for U.S. and Russian negotiators

The United States and Russia began a new set of talks aimed at a partial Ukraine ceasefire Monday — even as the two sides disagreed over how well the talks in Saudi Arabia were going and after another night of drone strikes.

American negotiators say they are hopeful of achieving “real progress” at the talks in Saudi Arabia, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned of “difficult negotiations.”

“There are still many aspects related to the settlement which are to be worked out,” Peskov told reporters on a media call Monday after Russia’s Foreign Ministry published video of its delegation arriving at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh.

The White House is attempting a strategy of “shuttle diplomacy,” one source familiar with the negotiations told NBC News — meeting with Russian delegates Monday having already spoken with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia a day before.

Both sides sounded upbeat following those talks, with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday calling the discussions “quite useful,” and saying his side was working in a “completely constructive manner.”

Meanwhile President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff told several broadcast shows the same day that he was hopeful of “real progress.”

But Witkoff had already raised alarm in Europe before both rounds of talks, telling Tucker Carlson’s podcast Friday he didn’t regard Russian President Vladimir “Putin as a bad guy” and said that Putin counted Trump as a friend.

Putin was reviled as a pariah across the West before Trump began his second term as president in January, not just for launching an unprovoked invasion into Ukraine, but for decades of election meddling and aggression abroad, and brutally silencing political opposition at home.

Sunday brought another reality check to the White House’s optimism.

Russia launched another 99 drones into Ukraine overnight into Monday and injured at least one person, officials said. The night before, it sent 147 of them across the border, killing three people in the capital of Kyiv including a father and his 5-year-old daughter, according to Zelenskyy.

Ukraine has increasingly attempted to defend itself by returning fire, and the Russian Minister of Defense said Kremlin forces intercepted and destroyed 28 drones sent into Russia on Sunday and overnight into Monday.

“Every night is now a large-scale Russian drone attack,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. 

There is also an apparent discrepancy in terms of what the three parties say is on the table. The White House has said that “energy and infrastructure” would be covered by the agreement, while the Kremlin phrases this as “energy infrastructure.” Zelenskyy has since said he would also like railways and ports to be protected.

On March 11, Putin said he would accept a partial 30-day ceasefire covering energy infrastructure, but included demands that would be so punishing for Kyiv as to be tantamount to surrender.

Meanwhile it has continued to pummel Ukrainian cities nightly.

“Every night is now a large-scale Russian drone attack,” Zelenskyy said Sunday. “Without pressure on Russia, they will continue to despise real diplomacy in Moscow and continue to destroy lives,” he added. “

“No matter what we talk about with our partners, we need to push Putin to give a real order to stop the strikes: whoever brought this war must take it away.”

Ukraine is also concerned that an agreement for unrestricted trade with the European Union, of which it is not a member, is set to end June 5.

While Ukrainian finance minister Serhiy Marchenko told the Financial Times that the deal’s expiry would damage Ukraine’s economy, some EU member states have recently opposed the agreement — made after Russia’s invasion in Feb. 2022 — is hurting their own economies.