President Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine.

And this week, U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to talk about beginning to do just that.

The U.S. says it's the first step towards a peace deal.

But there's one important voice that is very notably not at the negotiating table, Ukraine and its president,

Volodomir Zelensky.

Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement.

Zelensky and many Ukrainians say that they are being sidelined in negotiating the end of a war they had been fighting for the last three years.

From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. I'm Martine Powers. It's Wednesday, February 19th. Today, I talk with my colleague

Michael Bernbaum about what kind of peace deal the U.S. and Russia have been discussing, and whether Ukraine

will have a say in its future. All right, so Michael, you cover the White House and foreign policy,

and you've also covered diplomacy and national security for the post.

So I wanted to ask you to help make sense of what is happening right now.

It's kind of surprising to see these talks about ending the

war in Ukraine without Ukraine being involved in the talks. So can you walk me through what led up to

this moment and what led up to these meetings between the U.S. and Russia and Saudi Arabia?

Well, Martin, I have been covering Russia and Ukraine and their tangly, twisty relations for more than a decade.

And this last week or two has been among the most extraordinary stretches.

It has just been crazy to watch Donald Trump

handle this diplomacy. So the short answer to your question is, you know, Trump during the campaign

said that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in less than 24 hours.

That never made a lot of sense.

But he came into office saying he was going to put an end to this war, that there was too much killing.

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