After Trump announced meeting Putin in Saudi Arabia, the UAE requests to host talks to end the war in Ukraine

The UAE has told the United States it wants to host talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported, after US President Trump announced a meeting with Putin in Saudi Arabia.

The talks, which the UAE has asked to host, are supposed to end with a peace summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

US President Donald Trump has said one of his top priorities is to end the nearly three-year conflict that began when Russia invaded Ukraine, and announced on Wednesday that he may meet Putin in Saudi Arabia.

The agency quoted five sources who requested anonymity as saying that the UAE had enthusiastically offered to play a major role in trying to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Three of those sources, in the United States and the UAE, said Emirati officials had proposed to Washington that the Gulf state host a “peace summit.” Two of the sources said such a summit could eventually include a meeting between Putin and Zelensky.

A fourth source, close to Trump, said the UAE had emerged as a leading candidate for the first Trump-Putin meeting. The Kremlin said no decision had been made.

Saudi Arabia is the best place

The phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump was an American initiative, Russia's TASS news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Thursday. He revealed an Arab country that will bring the two presidents together in the coming weeks.

Trump and Putin spoke for more than an hour on Wednesday, the first known direct contact between a U.S. and Russian president since Putin held a call with Joe Biden shortly before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Trump said he and Putin agreed during the call to begin negotiations "immediately" on the Ukraine conflict.

The Kremlin spokesman confirmed that preparations for a meeting between the two presidents may take several months, but the two sides agreed that the Saudi capital, Riyadh, is the "appropriate place" for the meeting.

The Kremlin said on Thursday it was impressed with Trump's stance on ending the war in Ukraine, and said preparations were underway for a meeting between the two leaders.

Peskov said Ukraine would participate "one way or another" in any talks to end the war but there would be a separate US-Russian track to the talks.

Several European countries stressed the need to include Ukraine in any negotiations, and for Europe to be present at the table for future discussions.

The United States indicated on Wednesday that the idea of Ukraine joining NATO is not realistic, as is its return to its pre-2014 borders, i.e. with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed.

Source: Yemen Youth Net + Agencies