Kyiv, Ukraine - A senior Ukrainian official on Tuesday criticized President Donald Trump's team for launching talks with Russia without Ukraine after officials from Washington and Moscow held their first high-level meeting since the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and the US agreed to establish teams to negotiate a path to ending the war during a meeting in Saudi Arabia that excluded Kyiv.

"Both [former US presidents Barack] Obama before 2014 and [Joe] Biden before this war talked to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin about everyone without everyone, about us without us, about Europe without Europe," a senior official requesting anonymity told AFP.

"Someone in Trump's team led him in the same footsteps. This will only feed Putin's appetite and Putin's confidence that he will win and America will lose," the source continued.

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The source speculated that "it seems there is someone in Trump's team or close to him" who is raising "unrealistic expectations" about what could be achieved from Russia.

They added that Kyiv was counting on a face-to-face meeting with Trump's special Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, scheduled to visit Kyiv on February 20, to understand "what is really going on".

Trump's overhaul of US policy on Russia has raised fears Washington will make serious concessions to Moscow and re-write the continent's security arrangements in a Cold War-style deal.