ShareDUBAI/RIYADH: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Emirati counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on Monday to discuss economic cooperation, the UAE’s official news agency said. Sheikh Mohammed emphasized in the meeting the need to “build effective partnerships with the countries of the world”, according to the WAM news agency.
The Emirati president also spoke of “the importance of reaching peaceful solutions to crises” around the world, while Zelensky thanked the United Arab Emirates for its “contribution” to the exchange of prisoners between Kyiv and Moscow, WAM said. It added that the two countries also signed an “economic partnership agreement”.
Zelensky arrived in the UAE ahead of Tuesday talks between US and Russian officials in neighboring Saudi Arabia. Washington and Moscow have said their top diplomats, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will lead the delegations. A source close to the Saudi government told AFP it expected the officials to hold a preparatory meeting ahead of a possible summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Rubio was meeting on Monday with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the State Department said, during the top diplomat’s first Middle East tour. Rubio was expected to discuss President Trump’s widely criticized plan for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and move its Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere.
As Moscow and Washington are preparing for a summit between their two leaders, Europe and Kyiv are worried they will try to settle the three-year war in Ukraine without them. The Ukrainian president posted a video of himself getting off the plane in Abu Dhabi and holding talks with officials. “Our top priority is bringing even more of our people home from captivity,” Zelensky said on X. “We will also focus on investments and economic partnership, as well as a large-scale humanitarian program,” he added.
Zelensky said Kyiv was not invited to the discussions in Riyadh, while European leaders were gathering in Paris for emergency talks on how to respond to the radical pivot by the new US administration. Trump is pushing for a swift resolution to the three-year conflict in Ukraine, while Moscow sees his outreach as a chance to gain concessions on some of its long-standing gripes about Washington’s military presence in Europe.
Zelensky said Kyiv “did not know anything about” the talks in Riyadh, according to Ukrainian news agencies, and that it “cannot recognize any things or any agreements about us without us”. Moscow said ahead of the meeting that Putin and Trump wanted to move on from “abnormal relations” and that it saw no place for Europeans to be at any negotiating table.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov will meet with US Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the talks would be “primarily devoted to restoring the whole complex of Russian-American relations”, alongside discussions on “possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution, and organizing a meeting between the two presidents”.
Moscow, which for years has sought to roll back NATO’s presence in Europe, has made clear it wants to hold bilateral talks with the United States on a plethora of broad security issues, not just a possible Ukraine ceasefire. As European leaders gathered in Paris for an emergency security summit, Russia’s Lavrov said Monday he saw no point in them taking part in any Ukraine talks. “I don’t know what they would do at the negotiating table... if they are going to sit at the negotiating table with the aim of continuing war, then why invite them there?” he told a press conference in Moscow. – Agencies
