In Europe, Washington’s NATO allies announced hundreds of billions of dollars in new military spending Thursday as they try to plug the gap left by the Trump administration.
Senior Trump administration figures are planning to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Saudi Arabia next week, officials on both sides said Thursday, as Ukraine scrambles to repair its tattered relationship with Washington, its largest benefactor.
It’s the latest diplomatic turn for the Gulf theocracy. Saudi Arabia, which watchdogs accuse of widespread human rights abuses, has instituted some reforms in recent years.
President Donald Trump said later Thursday that his first foreign visit would be to the kingdom and that, in return, the nation’s monarchy had offered to invest $1 trillion in American companies.
Next week’s meeting is set to be between Zelenskyy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and national security adviser Mike Waltz, Witkoff told reporters Thursday. He added that the venue will either be the capital, Riyadh, or the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
“I think the idea is to get down a framework for a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire,” he said. “We are now in discussions to coordinate a meeting with the Ukrainians.”
Zelenskyy confirmed the summit in a post on X, saying it would come after he meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday. “Ukraine is most interested in peace,” he wrote. “As we told @POTUS, Ukraine is working and will continue to work constructively for a swift and reliable peace.”American-Ukrainian relations hit a low during last week’s extraordinary Oval Office shouting match between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy. That led to the U.S. cutting off military aid and intelligence sharing, something experts said could cost the lives of more Ukrainian troops and civilians.
Russia launched another attack Thursday night on Ukraine’s civilian power grid, officials in Kyiv said, with 250 missiles and drones injuring 10 people, causing widespread outages and prompting the government to urge people to ration their energy consumption.
Washington’s NATO allies in Europe are attempting to plug the gap left by Washington, announcing hundreds of billions of dollars in new military spending at a summit Thursday in Brussels. As with Ukraine, Trump’s ties with Europe have dramatically frayed, with officials telling NBC News that the administration is considering a radical policy shift in which it would favor NATO allies who spent more on their militaries.
Ukraine relations thawed somewhat Tuesday after Trump said that Zelenskyy had sent him a letter expressing contrition and that he was ready to sign a peace deal. Ukraine has not confirmed the letter, but Zelenskyy echoed Trump’s description in a post on X.
Witkoff said the “really good, positive” letter had prompted the Saudi meeting.
Saudi Arabia has increasingly become the venue for such summits. A Rubio-led American delegation met with Russian counterparts there last month, drawing ire from Europe and Ukraine who felt they were being left out.
The kingdom is set to get another diplomatic boon after Trump said that it would be his first foreign destination “the next month and a half” — as it was during his first term.
“I have a great relationship with them, and they’ve been very nice,” he said. “But they’re going to be spending a lot of money to American companies for buying military equipment and a lot of other things. Probably over the next month and a half.”
Trump said that Saudi Arabia had agreed to invest $1 trillion in American companies.
“This time, they’ve gotten richer, we’ve all gotten older, so I said, ‘I’ll go if you pay a trillion dollars to American companies over a four year period and they’ve agreed to do that,’” he said.
One U.S. firm to benefit from Saudi investment is Affinity Partners, the Miami-based fund founded by Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser, Jared Kushner. It received $2 billion from the kingdom six months after Trump left office in 2021.
In his first term, Trump said his visit there led to the signing of $350 million in deals. However, his destination was a major break with tradition, with every president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928 choosing either Mexico, Canada or Europe for their first international visit.