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Trump, Putin to negotiate without Ukraine — Kneissl

According to the former Austrian Foreign Minister, the next stage of the talks is a meeting between the two presidents

MOSCOW, March 4. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will conduct negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement without Kiev, head of the "G.O.R.K.I." center of the St. Petersburg State University and former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl said in a commentary with TASS.

"I do not think Ukraine will really be at the negotiating table," she noted. The former minister reminded that Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud who hosted the talks in Riyadh had originally proposed that the Ukrainian side be included. "He wanted to invite [Vladimir] Zelensky, but both, Washington and Moscow said: no, first and foremost, these are bilateral negotiations," she said.

According to Kneissl, the next stage of the talks is a meeting between the two presidents. "The summit must be planned to the last detail, so that nothing goes wrong, and so that it does not turn out to just be a waste of time and effort," she emphasized.

The former minister added that Putin and Trump are "very interesting people, and such a summit is a big event." "This is why preparations for a complete reboot of relations between Washington and Moscow on every level are underway, including in Istanbul, where meetings at the top level of foreign agencies took place on Thursday," she stated.

In recent weeks, communication between Russia and the United States has intensified. On February 12, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had a telephone conversation, which lasted nearly 1.5 hours and took place 23 days into Trump’s presidency. The presidents discussed a wide range of issues, including the Ukrainian conflict, bilateral relations and exchange of citizens. On February 18, high-ranking delegations from Russia and the United States met in Riyadh. Following the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that the parties had reached an agreement on the earliest possible appointment of ambassadors from both countries, as well as on removing long-standing obstacles to the work of Russian diplomatic missions. On February 27, a meeting was held in Istanbul at the level of representatives of foreign policy departments to tackle the problems of the work of embassies.

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