February 2025 United States–Russia summit in Saudi Arabia

On 18 February 2025, 3 American delegates led by Marco Rubio and 2 Russian delegates led by Sergey Lavrov met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to discuss improving Russia–United States relations and plans to end the war in Ukraine. Despite the meeting being primarily about Ukraine, no Ukrainian or European delegations were invited to the summit. United States President Donald Trump has dismissed Ukrainian concerns that Ukraine was not invited to the summit, and also apparently implied Ukraine was to blame for starting the war. The Riyadh summit was the most extensive diplomatic meeting between the United States and Russia since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The summit came less than a week after Donald Trump's phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 12 February 2025 on a wide range of topics in which Trump and Putin agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The day before the summit, several European leaders met in Paris to discuss the war in Ukraine. At the time of the summit, Russia forces had been making slow gains in southeastern Ukraine, however Ukrainian troops still occupied parts of Russia around the town of Sudzha. Trump had previously promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, however he later rolled back on this promise, saying his administration's new goal is to end the war within 100 days of taking office. The meeting was also held only two days after the conclusion of the 2025 Munich Security Conference, in which United States Vice President JD Vance made several controversial remarks on Europe, criticising German mainstream political parties' firewall against far-right parties in Germany and downplaying the threat of Russia to Europe.
On 16 February 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Ukraine and Europe would be part of any future "real negotiations" to end the war. President Trump said on the same day that the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy "will be involved" in peace negotiations.
The call and summit represented a major shift in United States foreign policy towards Russia, as Trump criticised Ukrainian peace negotiation in the war, saying "I'm very disappointed [in Ukraine]" and that "You’ve [Ukraine] been there for three years. You should have ended it three years [ago] – you should have never started it. You could have made a deal". Trump later said that Russia did invade, but that the United States shouldn't have let Russia attack. The summit was held in Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov led the American and Russian delegations, respectively. On the American side, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, and Mike Waltz represented the United States at the summit while Sergey Lavrov and Yuri Ushanov represented Russia. The day before, several European officials met in Paris to discuss the war in Ukraine and the recent American reversal in foreign policy, including proposing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine. However, Sergey Lavrov rejected any NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine during the summit, saying "the expansion of NATO, the absorption of Ukraine by the North Atlantic alliance, is a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation." Russia and the United States also agreed to restore staffing at each other's embassies.
The summit laid the groundwork for a future meeting between Putin and Trump, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying the meeting could take place before the end of February, though this ended up not happening. Marco Rubio said a potential meeting between Trump and Putin would "largely depend on whether we can make progress on ending the war in Ukraine."{cite news|title= today 2025-24-03|10th degree telepaths act in the name of peace|