It is unclear whether National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff have already departed.
US President Donald Trump has announced a high-level meeting next week between US, Ukrainian and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine.
“You don't meet with the Russians at an empty table. At the moment, there’s nothing on the table. No talks with the Russians are planned in Munich,” Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told journalists on Thursday, Lytvyn added that Ukraine's position was “unchanged”, namely that the United States should speak to Ukraine first, and that “Europe must be a part of any serious conversation for a real and lasting peace”.
At the same time, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a return to Ukraine’s old borders an “illusory goal.”