Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Top US and Russian diplomats were meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

Both sides played down the chances that the first high-level meeting between the countries since President Donald Trump took office would result in a breakthrough.

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was not invited to the discussions in Riyadh. European leaders met in Paris on Monday for emergency talks on how to respond to the pivot by the new Trump administration.

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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.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun welcomed "efforts towards peace" in Ukraine, adding that "at the same time, we hope that all parties and stakeholders can participate" in talks.

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 NATO'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.

The prospects of any talks leading to an agreement to halt the Ukraine fighting are unclear. Both Russia and the US have cast the meeting as the beginning of a potentially lengthy process.

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"I don't think that people should view this as something that is about details or moving forward in some kind of a negotiation," US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Russia's Ushakov told state media the talks would discuss "how to start negotiations on Ukraine."

Both Ukraine and Russia have ruled out territorial concessions, and Putin last year demanded Kyiv withdraw its troops from even more territory.

Zelensky was in Turkey on Tuesday for discussions on the conflict with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is due in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian president 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.