Russian negotiators stayed in the five-star Ritz-Carlton and dined on scallops while in Saudi Arabia to meet with US negotiators where they discussed ending the war in Ukraine for the first time.

Moscow’s delegation and Donald Trump’s representatives met for four-and-a-half hours on Tuesday in the Saudi Arabia capital, days after the US president spoke to Vladimir Putin on the phone.

During the lengthy talks, officials were fed a lunch menu which included a “symphony of scallop, shrimps and salmon”, the New York Times reported, citing Russian state media.

They were also fed a whole lamb and knafeh cheesecake, a Middle Eastern take on the popular Western dessert, while Kyiv was frozen out of the talks.

During their visit to Riyadh, Putin’s envoy stayed in the Ritz-Carlton, where in 2017 hundreds of Saudi Arabia’s elites were rounded up and detained in what was framed as a crackdown on corruption by the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman.