President Donald Trump's approach to ending Russia's war against Ukraine has left European allies and Ukrainian officials worried they are being largely sidelined by the new US administration as Washington and Moscow plan direct negotiations. With the three-year war grinding on, Trump is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security advisor Mike Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Saudi Arabia for talks with Russian counterparts, according to a US official who was not authorised to publicly discuss the upcoming diplomatic efforts and spoke on condition of anonymity. The outreach comes after comments by top Trump advisors this past week, including Vice-President JD Vance, raised new concerns in Kyiv and other European capitals that the Republican administration is intent on quick resolution to the conflict with minimum input from Europe.

"Decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an address at the Munich Security Conference. White House officials on Sunday pushed back against the notion that Europe has been left out of the conversation. During his visit to Munich and Paris, Vance held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte as well as Zelenskyy. "Now they may not like some of this sequencing that is going on in these negotiations but I have to push back on this ... notion that they aren't being consulted," Waltz said. "They absolutely are and at the end of the day, though, this is going to be under President Trump's leadership that we get this war to an end," Waltz said.