U.S. and Russia kick off high-level talks that exclude Ukraine and Europe

As the deadliest war in Europe since World War II rages in Ukraine, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other European leaders are alarmed and dismayed at being shut out of the talks. One of Kyiv’s main concerns was that Russia would be given the go-ahead to keep some 20% of the country it has occupied.

“Ukraine did not know anything about it,” Zelenskyy warned ahead of the meeting.

Kyiv “regards any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine as ones that have no result, and we cannot recognize … any agreements about us without us,” he said, adding that he planned to travel to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for a trip had had been arranged in advance and was not related to the talks between the U.S. and Russia.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that Russia could use the pause to remobilize and mount a fresh attack on Ukraine or target other countries in Europe.

“Russia is threatening all of Europe now, unfortunately,” Frederiksen said, reflecting the view of many in Europe that Putin would seek to dominate, if not outright occupy, more countries.

In Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that has come under heavy Russian shelling throughout the war, residents balanced their hopes for an end to the fighting with fears about Trump’s decision to leave Kyiv out of negotiations.

“It’s confusing. It’s going quickly and we don’t see where it’s going,” Yulia Ishuk, who worked at a restaurant in the port city of Odesa before the war and now runs a rehab center for soldiers, told an NBC News crew on the ground.

“Without our president, Zelenskyy … its kind of like games behind our backs and we don’t like it because we don’t understand that,” Ishuk, 47, said. “We don’t understand what’s going on.”

As negotiators had discussions in Riyadh, Washington’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, was in Brussels on Tuesday, where he was was meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ahead of a trip to Ukraine.

During his briefing in Abu Dhabi, Zelenskyy said he wanted to take Kellogg “to the front line” and have him meet with intelligence officials and diplomats so he could “bring more information back to America.”