Who are the key officials attending Russia and US talks?

Top US and Russian officials are set to meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday with the aim of restoring ties and setting up negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has said the discussions in Riyadh could pave the way for a face-to-face meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin "very soon". It comes after the pair held a ground-breaking lengthy phone call last Wednesday.

Follow peace talk and Ukraine war updates live. Riyadh, which is also involved in talks with Washington over the future of the Gaza Strip, has played a role in early contacts between the Trump administration. But who will be involved in the discussions tomorrow?. Marco Rubio. Mr Trump's secretary of state who arrived in Riyadh on Monday, serves as the president's chief foreign affairs adviser and the country's top diplomat.

Mr Rubio, a former Florida senator, already spoke to Russian foreign affairs minister Sergey Lavrov over the phone on Saturday, discussing the war in Ukraine and other topics, according to readouts of the call from both countries. The US president and Mr Rubio were adversaries when they both ran to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2016, launching public insults at one another. But over the past few years Mr Rubio has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Mr Trump's views - so much so that he was one of three final contenders for Mr Trump's vice-presidential pick for this term, eventually losing out to JD Vance.

Before he was made secretary of state, the 53-year-old said Ukraine needed to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all territory that Russia has taken in the last decade. "I'm not on Russia's side - but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement," he said in September. Michael Waltz. US national security adviser Michael Waltz will be alongside Mr Rubio during the US-Russia talks.

The 51-year-old is a Green Beret veteran who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Since 2019, he has represented a congressional district in the House, where he's a member of the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees. Before his appointment in Mr Trump's cabinet, he co-wrote an article in The Economist that laid out his view of how the US could move to convince Russia to end the war: either by offering to ease sanctions or threatening greater assistance to Kyiv.

"America can use economic leverage, including lifting the pause on exports of liquefied natural gas and cracking down on Russia's illicit oil sales, to bring Mr Putin to the table," he wrote in the 2 November piece, co-authored with Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon strategist. "If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use. Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.".

He said that he didn't want Moscow to be able to declare its actions in Ukraine a victory. Instead, he wrote that requiring Mr Putin to accept a deal whereby Ukraine remains an independent state, closely tied to the West "would be a strategic defeat for the Russian leader and seen as such in Beijing". Steve Witkoff. Mr Witkoff, Mr Trump's special Middle East envoy, is a long-time friend of the president's and a fellow billionaire real estate developer.

The 67-year-old, who has known Mr Trump for decades, is a Republican donor and served on one of the president's Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like Mr Trump, he made his fortune in real estate in both New York and Florida, and brought family members - his wife, Lauren, and sons Alex and Zach - into the Witkoff Group. He is regularly seen bonding with Mr Trump on the golf course, and was present on the course in Florida during the apparent assassination attempt on the president last September.

Mr Witkoff has been busy in his new Middle East role, having been Mr Trump's man in the room for the extremely fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations. In a Fox News interview on Sunday, he confirmed he was heading to Riyadh, adding: "And hopefully we'll make some really good progress.". Sergei Lavrov. Sergei Lavrov is Russia's longstanding foreign minister, having taken the role back in 2004. The highly decorated Kremlin official has been described as "the Jedi master of the dark arts of Russian diplomacy" by Sky News' international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn.

He said Mr Lavrov is "a diplomatic bruiser who cajoles and bullies where he sees fit" who has been known, like others at the Kremlin, to make outlandish claims about the reality of the war. Initially, when rumours of a Russian invasion sparked, he said it would never happen - then once it began, he for some time insisted that it hadn't. The 74-year-old made headlines when he unintentionally made the audience at an international conference in India laugh in March 2023 by attempting to portray his country as the victim of the war in Ukraine.