U.S. and Russia Pursue Partnership in a Head-Spinning Shift in Relations

Senior American and Russian officials agreed on Tuesday to establish teams to work toward ending the war in Ukraine and finding a path toward normalizing relations, in the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in more than three years.

After more than four hours of talks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both sides had agreed to work on a peace settlement for Ukraine as well as to explore “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians,” both geopolitically and economically.

A senior Kremlin official, Yuri Ushakov, said that both sides had “a very serious discussion on all the issues that we wanted to touch on,” including preparations for a summit meeting between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin.

The meeting was the latest striking swerve by the Trump administration in abandoning Western efforts to isolate Russia and punish it for invading Ukraine and causing Europe’s most destructive war in generations.

Instead, the talks showed that Mr. Trump was eager to work with Russia to end the war — an approach that would most likely fulfill many of Mr. Putin’s demands — and that he was prepared to cast aside the worries of American allies in Europe.

The comments suggested that apprehensions in Europe and Ukraine may only deepen that the United States and Russia could try to strike their own peace deal, sidelining Kyiv and American allies. And Russia appeared to have used Tuesday’s talks to cater to Mr. Trump’s interest in profits and natural resources, arguing that American oil companies and others stood to gain hundreds of billions of dollars by again doing business in Russia.