Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the U.S. delegation to the talks in Jeddah, said Washington would present the ceasefire offer to the Kremlin, which has thus far opposed anything short of a permanent end to the conflict without accepting any concessions.
“We’re going to tell them this is what’s on the table. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking. And now it’ll be up to them to say yes or no," Rubio told reporters after the meeting. “If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.”
President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, added: "The Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear, that they share President Trump’s vision for peace.”
Tuesday's discussions, which lasted for nearly eight hours, appeared to put rest, for the moment at least, the animosity between Trump and Zelenskyy that erupted during the Oval Office meeting last month.
Waltz said the negotiators “got into substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end,” including long-term security guarantees. And, he said, Trump agreed to immediately lift the pause in the supply of billions of of dollars of U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing.
Senior officials began meeting only hours after Russia shot down over 300 Ukrainian drones. It was Ukraine’s biggest attack since the Kremlin ordered the full-scale invasion of its neighbor. Neither U.S. nor Ukrainian officials offered any comment on the barrage.
Trump 's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel later this week to Moscow, where he could meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. The person cautioned that scheduling could change.
Meanwhile, in an address posted shortly after Tuesday's talks ended, Zelenskyy reiterated Ukraine’s commitment to achieving a lasting peace, emphasizing that the country has sought an end to the war since its outset.
“Our position is absolutely clear: Ukraine has strived for peace from the very first second of this war, and we want to do everything possible to achieve it as soon as possible — securely and in a way that ensures war does not return,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak told reporters ahead of the talks that the most important thing was "how to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine." He said security guarantees were important to prevent Russia from invading again in the future.
Elsewhere, Russia launched 126 drones and a ballistic missile at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, as part of Moscow's relentless pounding of civilian areas during the war.
On the streets of Kyiv, Ukrainians kept an eye on the Saudi talks.
Lena Herasymenko, a psychologist, said she accepts that compromises will be necessary to end the war, but she said they must be “reasonable.”
“We had massive losses during this war, and we don’t know yet how much more we’ll have,” she told The Associated Press. “We are suffering every day. Our kids are suffering, and we don’t know how the future generation will be affected.”
Oleksandr, a Ukrainian soldier who could give only his first name because of security restrictions, warned that Ukraine cannot let down its guard down.
“If there is a ceasefire, it would only give Russia time to increase its firepower, manpower, missiles and other arms. Then they would attack Ukraine again,” he said.
The meeting in Jeddah offered an opportunity for Kyiv officials to repair Ukraine's relationship with the Trump administration after an unprecedented argument erupted during Zelenskyy's Feb. 28 visit to the White House.
The Kremlin is sticking to its conditions for peace
The Kremlin has not publicly offered any concessions. Russia has said it’s ready to cease hostilities on condition that Ukraine drops its bid to join NATO and recognizes regions that Moscow occupies as Russian. Russia has captured nearly a fifth of Ukraine's territory.
Russian forces have held the battlefield momentum for more than a year, though at a high cost in infantry and armor, and are pushing at selected points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, against Ukraine's understrength and weary army.
Ukraine has invested heavily in developing its arms industry, especially high-tech drones that have reached deep into Russia.
Most of the Ukrainian drones fired overnight — 126 of them — were shot down over the Kursk region across the border from Ukraine, parts of which Kyiv’s forces control, and 91 were shot down over the Moscow region, according to a statement by Russia's Defense Ministry.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said over 70 drones targeted the Russian capital and were shot down as they were flying toward it — the biggest single attack on Moscow so far in the war.
The governor of the Moscow region surrounding the capital, Andrei Vorobyov, said the attack damaged several residential buildings and a number of cars.
Flights were temporarily restricted in and out of six airports, including Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky just outside Moscow, and airports in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions.
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Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova and Dmytro Zhyhinas in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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