On 18 February, the first meeting between two high-level diplomatic delegations of Russia and the United States since the outbreak of war in Ukraine on 22 February 2022 was held in Riyadh.

The important overtures made by Donald Trump towards Russia, sealed by the first phone call between the two presidents on 12 February, led to the intensification of diplomatic dialogue between the two nations, making it possible to quickly set up a bilateral negotiating table to discuss the future of the Ukrainian conflict, in the absence of both NATO allies and Ukraine itself.

The location chosen for the talks is no coincidence, as Saudi Arabia represents, due to its ‘hybrid’ geopolitical position, a friendly or at least non-hostile partner for both sides.

Prince-Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman has made immense efforts during his years in government to strengthen his country’s partnership with the US, so much so that he was the first foreign leader to receive a phone call from Trump after the inauguration ceremony, while at the same time remaining Moscow’s partner in OPEC without ever having joined Western sanctions.

Few cameras and a lot of anticipation accompanied the first summit between the highest ranks of the US and Russian diplomatic corps, the tip of the iceberg of the increasingly intense tourbillon of contacts between the respective sherpas and a prelude to the ever closer meeting between Putin and Trump, which will also be held in Riyadh.

The presidents’ men, the faces behind the negotiation

Far too much has been said about Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, so that today, in order to better understand their intentions and modus operandi, we will focus on the men they have invested in setting up the peace talks in Ukraine and the possible re-normalisation of relations between the two countries.

Team USA

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State – Leading the US delegation to Riyadh is the federal government’s newly appointed foreign policy chief, former Florida Senator Marco Rubio. A former lawyer, born in 1971, he became a Senator for the GOP in 2011 when he earned the nickname ‘rising star’ of the party. On the strength of his popularity, he ran in 2016 for the presidential nomination for the Republican Party, tapping the consensus of the neocons establishment of Bushian memory. In a fiery electoral campaign, he does not skimp on clashes with Donald Trump, a candidate at odds with Rubio’s supporters, from which he is defeated and forced to withdraw. In the following years, in which he always retained his seat on Capitol Hill, he aligned himself with MAGA domestic policy positions while maintaining a different line on foreign policy. As vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he has always held a position of support for Ukraine and Israel in an anti-BRICS context, making several diplomatic trips to Kyiv. Since the beginning of his tenure as Secretary of State, he has taken a very tough stance towards the Palestinians and Iran, while softening his posture towards Russia. He likes to sum up his approach in foreign policy in a slogan: ‘Peace through strength’.

Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor – 51 years old, retired colonel after twenty-seven years of service in the national guard and army. Also born in Florida, more precisely in Palm Beach County, he has served since 2001 as an advisor to Defence Secretaries Rumsfeld and Gates and counter-terrorism advisor to Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney. A national security hawk with uncompromising positions on immigration and the fight against Mexican cartels, he became a member of the House of Representatives in 2019, replacing Ron De Santis. Husband of the former National Security Advisor in the first Trump administration, Julia Nesheiwat, he is pushing hard for the imposition of a US policy of deterrence to diplomatically restore the ongoing conflicts, deeply convinced that Peace in Ukraine can only occur through a Russia-US dialogue, excluding Kyiv and European chancelleries altogether.Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy to the Middle East – Real estate tycoon and philanthropist, born in the Bronx to a Jewish family in 1957 and raised on Long Island. After starting a career as a legal advisor, when he met the young tycoon Trump in the 1980s, Witkoff began buying and reselling properties in the Bronx, through his company Stellar Management created through funds of unknown origin. Until 2025 no diplomatic or political experience, he was appointed by Trump (of which he was a major backer) as special envoy to the Middle East, with the task of presiding over the hottest negotiating tables of the global chessboard, lending lustre to the nickname ‘the Wolf of deals’. He has always cultivated strong ties with Russia, especially with the Jewish communities in Moscow and St. Petersburg, so much so that he was the first senior official of the new administration to be welcomed in Moscow by Vladimir Putin on 11 February. After three hours of talks, Witkoff returned home, bringing with him Pennsylvania professor Marc Fogel, detained in Russia since 2021, laying the groundwork for the telephone conversation between the leaders the following day.

TeamRussia

Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs – Born in Moscow to a family of Armenian descent in 1950, he graduated in International Relations and Studies in 1972. A child of the Soviet diplomatic school, Lavrov completed his career as a government official first under the USSR and then under the Russian Federation, of which he was High Representative at the UN for ten years before becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2004. Poker face and the technique of ‘lying knowing that you are lying’ (see: ‘Bucha’ ) have always been the hallmarks of Lavrov’s diplomatic approach. In his book ‘The Impopulist Challenge’, Paolo Gentiloni calls him ‘the smartest man I have ever met’, an opinion widespread in the drawing rooms of international politics. Sly and witty, for more than 20 years he has been translating Putin’s imperialist geopolitical ambitions into diplomatic language, succeeding in the subtle task of softening them and making them ‘digestible’ in the eyes of the international community. He owns a penthouse apartment in London, seized in 2022 from the possession of his adopted daughter Polina Kovaleva.

Yuri Ushakov, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor – Born on 13 March 1947 in Moscow. He completed his entire diplomatic career in the Soviet and later the Russian apparatus, rising to the sensitive position of ambassador in Washington between 1998 and 2008. He is regarded in the control rooms as Putin’s ‘Richelieu’ , the grey eminence who knows everything and decides a lot about the ‘tsar’s’ decisions. Rarely in contact with the public, he has always maintained active diplomatic and personal channels with the United States, Turkey and China, even at times of heightened political tension. With a declared income of 3 million roubles per year, he owns real estate worth at least 750 million roubles (= EUR 13 million), according to the Russian newspaper Metla in a 2022 investigation.

Dmitri Rybolovlev, Oligarch – Few people realised it, since he sat in the ‘second line’ benches, but in Riyadh there was also Dmitri Rybolovlev, Russian entrepreneur and the 432nd richest man in the world in 2024 according to Forbes and, hear hear, business partner of US President Donald Trump. A protagonist of the savage partitioning of state companies following the fall of communism, Rybolovlev obtained control of the potash-producing giant Uralkali for free thanks to generous court concessions, which he sold in 2011 for $6.5 billion. In the 1990s, he held roles in several Russian companies, where he exerted his influence through violence, a typical conduct of the system masterfully described by Anna Politkovskaya in ‘Putin’s Russia’. This modus operandi can be seen plastically in the 1995 murder of Evgeny Panteleymonov, general director of the Netfchimil company – of which Rybolovlev was president – because of the latter’s complaint about criminal methods and figures within the company. The oligarch is convicted as a principal, being released from prison after only one year on bail. In 2008, he bought Donald Trump’s Maison de L’Amite in Palm Beach for the sum of EUR 95 million, according to experts at least 25 per cent higher than the market value at the time, saving the tycoon from bankruptcy. He owns large shares in the Bank of Cyprus, where he is considered among the most influential men in the country, and 66% of the shares of AS Monaco, in partnership with Prince Rainier III.

The Saudi negotiators – At this first meeting, the honours were done by Saudi Prince and Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan and National Security Advisor Musaed al Aiban. These, having fulfilled their task as ‘facilitators’, left the table, leaving the two previously described delegations alone.

Conclusion

The consequences of these meetings will be dealt with in later articles; already worth mentioning is the US call for new elections.

The fact that makes us Europeans turn our noses up at this is the absence firstly of the Ukrainians, the injured party and protagonist of the agreements, and secondly of the EU institutions, which we recall having financed Kiev with around 130 billion euros in total aid.

The stadium fans from Europe who rejoice in the achievements of Trump and Putin in defiance of themselves and Ukraine, practise the unfortunate discipline of masochism, admiring a table of ‘comrades‘ where politics is mixed with personal economic interests, of dubious legitimacy.

The only way is a just peace, which is not synonymous with partition.