RIYADH: US President Donald Trump has praised Saudi Arabia for a “great job” in hosting Russia-Ukraine peace talks, and thanked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for facilitating the discussions in Riyadh.
Trump, speaking on Wednesday at the opening of the Future Investment Initiative Institute Summit in Miami, which runs until Feb. 21, said he hopes that a ceasefire could be achieved soon.
Trump said the conflict, which began three years ago this month, would not have started had he been president.
He said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “talked the US into spending $350 billion to go into a war that could not be won, that never had to start and never would have started if I was president.”
Senior US and Russian officials attended the meeting in Riyadh on Tuesday to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting was attended by senior Saudi Arabia officials, but no Ukraine representatives.
Trump said that Zelensky could have attended the discussions in Riyadh had he wanted to do so.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks, and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.
In his wide-ranging speech, Trump touched on efforts to cut government waste and boost energy production, as well as his foreign policy objectives.
Dignitaries included Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and Princess Reema bint Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US.
Also in attendance was billionaire Elon Musk, who heads a new US federal entity — the Department of Government Efficiency — meant to cut wasteful expenditure.
