Zelensky was not at the table for the Riyadh negotiation

Maybe, or maybe not, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special negotiator, will travel to Moscow, allegedly to brief Russian president Vladimir Putin. Right now Witkoff is in Riyadh with the rest of the US delegation in talks with the Ukrainians.

The Russians have not confirmed any Witkoff visit.

Those talks are supposed to take Ukraine’s temperature on President Trump’s peace initiative. The administration has been saying that any deal will require concessions from both sides, but Ukraine will have to give up territory.

What makes the Riyadh discussions (I choose not to call the meeting a negotiation) bizarre is that Vladimir Zelensky did not attend the talks.

Zelensky is in Riyadh. He met with Saudi Arabia’s real leader, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Sultan. What they talked about is anyone’s guess. Apparently he stayed on after that meeting, and may be across the hall from where the meeting took place.

It is fair to ask how come Zelensky is not at the meeting and how come he is hanging around. The delegation in the meeting could, of course, consult with him during the breaks, and Zelensky could give instructions.

The Duran says that Washington did not want Zelensky at the Riyadh meeting. This is quite doubtful.

According to the latest from Riyadh, Ukraine says it is ready for a 30 day cease fire. If this is what Washington “extracted” from the Ukrainians, it is operationally meaningless. With Russia on the brink of winning in Kursk and elsewhere, the Russians won’t accept any such deal. If it is a ruse to allow the US to resume arms shipments to Ukraine, knowing Russia will reject it, the so-called peace initiative is a dead letter.

[After this was published, Washington announced it was resuming arms sales to Ukraine. The rest is history.]

On the early morning before the Riyadh meeting, Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on Russia, with Moscow and the Moscow region (along the drone approaches) hit hard. The Ukrainians used domestically produced Palianytsia which carries a 50 kg warhead and can fly 600km at about 800 kph. It is claimed that Palianytsia can operate without needing a man in the loop (meaning now real time communications), but this seems unlikely as video of take downs of Ukrainian drones using jammers have appeared online.

Altogether 337 drones were shot down, according to Moscow, by a combination of Russian air defenses and jammers. The Russians did not report how many drones were launched by the Ukrainians or how many got through and hit their targets. Complicating matters is that a drone that is hit may still fall and destroy property or kill or wound people.

Of the 337 shot down, here is an accounting, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense:

91 UAVs – over the territory of the Moscow region,
126 UAVs – over the territory of the Kursk region,
38 UAVs – over the territory of the Bryansk region,
25 UAVs – over the territory of the Belgorod region,
22 UAVs – over the territory of the Ryazan region,
10 UAVs – over the territory of the Kaluga region,
8 UAVs – over the territory of the Lipetsk region,
8 UAVs – over the territory of the Oryol region,
6 UAVs – over the territory of the Voronezh region,
3 UAVs – over the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region.

Most of the targets appear to have been apartment blocks, some rail lines, at least one fuel storage facility, and others not yet reported. The number of killed and wounded also is not yet available.

It was provocative for Kiev to launch these attacks, although they had justification in that the strikes could be called retaliatory, at the moment of the meeting in Riyadh. The decision to do so appears to have been taken because Ukraine is close to being solidly defeated in Kursk and is trying to cover up that defeat by deflecting attention from it.

Given the decision to go ahead at the very moment of the discussions in Riyadh also served as a sort of warning to Washington. Ukraine’s real mantra is to keep fighting no matter what the cost.

This explains why it is unlikely in the extreme that there will be a peace process, no matter how much Washington wants one, or says it does.

Quite possibly, the outcome of the war will be on the battlefield, not otherwise.

This leaves Washington and Europe with no real exit. Europe knows that if it tries to save Ukraine with Euro/NATO troops, a general war will start and the Russians will attack NATO’s installations and try and punish those states backing such a mission, namely the UK, France and maybe Germany. In such a case, as President Trump has made clear, the US will not come to the rescue, at least not right away.

There is one interesting development that suggests there may be a way to enforce a deal. The new head of the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu, visited Moscow the day before the attack, and was shown the results of the drone attack by the Russians.

Relations between the OSCE and Russia have been very bad for a number of years. Apparently Sinirlioglu wants to change that. Sergey Lavrov, who met with Sinirlioglu in Moscow, was upbeat on the potential for change.

What does this have to do with peace in Ukraine? OSCE was the security overseer of the Minsk Accords in 2014 and 2015. Could Moscow be thinking about a return engagement either with a sanctioned peace deal, or some arrangement in future if Russia wins the war? Time will tell.

A key point is that the presence of OSCE (where Russia has a veto) obviates the need for any other peacekeepers, European, NATO or otherwise. This may be at least one plan Moscow has in its back pocket.

Meanwhile Russia continues pressing Ukraine’s army, gaining ground. If Russia forces Ukraine’s army into surrendering, the game is over. Then it is Russia’s problem figuring out what to do with a hostile population and a wrecked infrastructure.

Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.