The meeting was the first time since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russian and American delegations are known to have met face-to-face.

While U.S. officials characterized the talks as the first step in a peace deal, the Russians are portraying them as a way to end Moscow’s isolation.

As Europeans talked the possibility of contributing peacekeepers to back any Ukraine peace deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said in Riyadh that Moscow would not accept the deployment of NATO troops there,