Preparations are underway for a face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said Saturday. It marked a clear departure from Western efforts to isolate Moscow over its war in Ukraine. Speaking to Russian state media, Sergei Ryabkov said a possible Putin-Trump summit could involve broad talks on global issues, not just the war in Ukraine. “The question is about starting to move toward normalizing relations between our countries, finding ways to resolve the most acute and potentially very, very dangerous situations, of which there are many, Ukraine among them,” he said. But he said efforts to organize such a meeting are at an early stage, and that making it happen will require “the most intensive preparatory work.” Ryabkov added that U.S. and Russian envoys could meet within the next two weeks to pave the way for further talks among senior officials. Russian and U.S. representatives meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday agreed to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy under Trump. Senior U.S. officials have suggested Ukraine will have to give up its goals of joining NATO and retaining the 20% of its territory seized by Russia. After the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told The Associated Press the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies; to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks; and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation. He stressed, however, that the talks, which were attended by his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and other senior Russian and U.S. official, marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needs to be done. Lavrov, for his part, hailed the meeting as “very useful.” No Ukrainian officials were present at the Saudi meeting, which came as their beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops, nearly three years after Moscow launched an all-out invasion of its smaller neighbor. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country would not accept any outcome from the talks since Kyiv didn’t take part, and he postponed his own trip to Saudi Arabia scheduled for last Wednesday. European allies have also expressed concerns that they are being sidelined. Trump appears to soften criticism of Kyiv Trump on Friday appeared to walk back his earlier comments that falsely blamed Kyiv for starting the war, but insisted that Zelenskyy and former U.S. President Joe Biden should have done more to come to terms with Putin. “Russia attacked, but they shouldn’t have let him attack,” he said during a radio interview with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News, referring to the Russian leader. Russia’s army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022, in an all-out invasion that Putin sought to justify by falsely saying it was needed to protect Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO. Later on Friday, at the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that the war “doesn’t affect the United States very much. It’s on the other side of the ocean. It does affect Europe.” On Saturday, Trump acknowledged that Russia did invade Ukraine. “Russia was never going to go in. And they went in because of […]