RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) — Top United States (US) and Russian diplomats were meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting their countries’ fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said Kyiv was not invited to the discussions in Riyadh, is due in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday but he does not plan to hold talks with either the US or Russian delegations, his spokesperson said.

Zelensky said last week he was prepared to meet Putin, but only after Kyiv and its allies had a common position on ending the war.

Reporters said the meeting between US and Russian diplomats began in the morning at the Saudi capital’s Diriyah Palace.

The talks have triggered concern in Ukraine and Europe.

European leaders met in Paris on Monday for emergency talks on how to respond to the radical pivot by the new Trump administration.

Preparations for a possible summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are also expected to be on the agenda.

Trump is pushing for a swift resolution to the three-year conflict in Ukraine, while Russia sees his outreach as a chance to win concessions.

Zelensky said Kyiv “did not know anything about” the talks in Riyadh, according to Ukrainian news agencies, and that it “cannot recognize any things or any agreements about us without us.”

He said on social media that any peace deal would need to include “robust and reliable” security guarantees, which France and Britain have called for but not all European powers support.

Russia said ahead of the meeting that Putin and Trump wanted to move on from “abnormal relations” and that it saw no place for Europeans to be at any negotiating table.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov will meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters the talks would be “primarily devoted to restoring the whole complex of Russian-American relations,” alongside discussions on “possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution, and organizing a meeting between the two presidents.”

Moscow, which for years has sought to roll back the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s presence in Europe, has made clear it wants to hold bilateral talks with the US on a plethora of broad security issues, not just a possible Ukraine ceasefire.