Rubio and Lavrov Meet in Manila in First Face-to-Face Talks Since 2025

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Thursday on the sidelines of a summit of Southeast Asian nations in Manila, their first in-person encounter since September 2025 and a sign that Washington is trying to breathe life back into stalled diplomacy over Ukraine.

The two diplomats spoke for about 35 minutes and neither made statements nor took questions from reporters before or after the closed-door meeting, which took place during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers' gathering in the Philippine capital. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was also among the top diplomats in Manila for the ASEAN talks.

The encounter was widely read as an attempt by Rubio to restart peace negotiations that President Trump has sought to broker between Russia and Ukraine since returning to the White House early last year. The agenda, according to both sides, spanned the war in Ukraine as well as the U.S. confrontation with Iran. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was the American side that requested the meeting.

Afterward, Rubio signaled that Washington remains committed to helping bring the fighting in Ukraine to an end, even as the war grinds on with no clear breakthrough. The brief, businesslike tone of the session underscored how far apart the two capitals remain, but also that channels of communication are still open at the highest levels of the two governments.

Rubio used his swing through Manila to press other elements of the administration's foreign policy as well, defending Trump's agreement to help Saudi Arabia develop a civilian nuclear program using U.S. technology — a deal that nonproliferation experts have warned could eventually put the kingdom on a path toward a nuclear weapons capability. The secretary framed the arrangement as opening major opportunities for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy sector.

For the Kremlin, any high-profile contact with a senior American official carries diplomatic value at a moment when Moscow remains heavily isolated by Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. For Washington, the meeting is a calculated bet that direct engagement, rather than pressure alone, might yet produce movement toward a ceasefire. Whether the 35 minutes in Manila amount to anything more than a photograph and a handshake will depend on what follows in the weeks ahead. Analysts cautioned that a single sideline meeting rarely shifts the trajectory of a war, and Ukrainian officials have long been wary of deals negotiated over their heads. Still, with battlefield lines largely frozen and both economies strained by a grinding conflict now in its fourth year, even incremental diplomacy is being watched closely in Kyiv, Brussels and Beijing for any hint of where Washington and Moscow might be willing to compromise.