Breaking News: Why Trump chose Saudi Arabia as venue for peace talks with Putin….See More

After a telephonic call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump told White House reporters on Wednesday that he would meet his counterpart from Moscow in Saudi Arabia for talks to end the almost three-year Ukraine war. Saudi Arabia, the venue for the Trump-Putin meeting, does not seem to be a choice decided at random.

There appears to be a clear rationale behind why Riyadh is seen as the most suitable place to initiate a practical peace process between Russia and Ukraine and bring an end to the war. This conflict has claimed about 12,500 civilian lives, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), leaving more than 28,000 injured including many permanently disabled, and caused the destruction of infrastructure worth billions of dollars. Most critically, neither Moscow nor Kyiv seems to have a clear path toward ending it.