The United States has agreed separately with Russia and Ukraine to end fighting in the Black Sea and to “develop measures” to ban military strikes on energy facilities, the White House says.
A fresh round of talks between U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators in Saudi Arabia started on Tuesday morning, but an announced joint statement from Washington and Moscow failed to materialise. Nevertheless, progress appears to be at hand with the United States announcing agreements had been struck with Ukraine, and with Russia, to enact what has been called a ceasefire at sea to protect shipping in the Black Sea.
In language that appears to exclude the possibility that Ukraine and Russia have yet to contract any agreement, but will be independently working towards the same goal through Washington, the White House said in two separate statements that the countries had agreed to “ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”
No dates or deadlines were published, and, like the discussion of all parties having agreed to the precepts of a ceasefire at last week’s talks, when exactly this period of “safe navigation” will begin is unclear.
UPDATE 1630 GMT — Russia responds
The office of the Russian President has now published its own corresponding readout on the Riyadh talks, which as has become typical through this ceasefire negotiation process goes into more detail than the American. On the Black Sea, Moscow names what the White House was talking about specifically as the “Black Sea Initiative”, an evident throwback to the 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, and actually lists a series of sanctions it believes will be lifted by the United States to enable Russian access to world commerce again.
Among them are the lifting of sanctions on Russian banks and financial institutions, including access to the international payments system ‘SWIFT’, lifting sanctions on Russian food and fertilizer companies, Russian insurers indemnifying Russian merchant ships, and allowing access of Russian ships to foreign ports.
Russia said the Black Sea Initiative, so called would also wait on restrictions on Russia being able to import agricultural machinery being lifted.
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Ukraine was quick to impose its own interpretation of the White House statement regarding the Black Sea, with Kyiv’s defence minister Rustem Umerov explaining what Ukraine would consider a further act of war. “All movements” of the Russian navy outside the eastern part of the Black Sea — which is so remote from Ukraine it is beyond useful military range and is where much of the Russian fleet withdrew in 2023 to escape further Ukrainian attacks — “will constitute violation of the spirit of this agreement”.
Umerov continued: “In this case Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defence”.
Also, moving between the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine in the dual readouts, is an agreement to “develop measures for implementing President Trump’s and President Zelenskyy’s agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities”. Critically, this line makes clear that strikes would be banned against both Ukrainian and Russian facilities, a major feature in the missile and drone strikes by both sides in the conflict so far.
Again, no timeline for implementation was stated, merely an agreement to work towards the goal.
The statements also had nation-specific agreements. For Ukraine, the United States said it “remains committed” to “achieve the exchange of prisoners of war” and the return of “forcibly transferred” — Kyiv generally says kidnapped — Ukrainian children. For Russia, the White House stated it would be helping to restore Russia’s access to world markets for food and fertiliser exports.
This is a major development and signals the beginning of the end of the sanctions regime, given that such access also entails Russian access to global payment mechanisms, which Western states suspended in the early days of the war.
In both, the White House re-emphasised President Trump’s “imperative that the killing on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict must stop, as the necessary step toward achieving an enduring peace settlement”.
While the statement implies definite progress — if no actual hard agreement for ceasefires — the readouts are somewhat short of the alleged coming Washington-Moscow joint statement that the Kremlin claimed would be coming on Tuesday morning after a marathon 12-hour negotiating session into Monday night.
Vladimir Chizhov, the former Russian permanent representative to the European Union, blamed Ukraine for the outcome, saying a joint message had been made impossible by Kyiv, although offering no evidence or deeper insight with the assertion.
According to Russian state media reports, he said: “… the fact that they sat for 12 hours and seemed to agree on a joint statement, which, however, was not adopted due to Ukraine ‘s position – this is also very characteristic and symptomatic”.
Grigory Karasin, one of the Russian negotiators around the table in Riyadh overnight, also sounded a pessimistic tone. RIA Novosti, Russian state media formerly known as the Soviet Information Bureau, reported Karasin as saying that the talks had been: “A very interesting, difficult, but quite constructive… We sat all day from morning until late at night”.
Among the topics discussed were — per President Donald Trump — lines of demarcation and Ukrainian nuclear power plants. Russia, for its part, said talks touched on the now officially announced ceasefire in the Black Sea to allow shiploads of agricultural exports to make it out of the warzone.
A ceasefire at sea is one of those areas both warring parties say they want, but really only on their own terms, and both sides accuse the other of bad faith.
Russia walked away from the last so-called grain deal in the Black Sea in 2023, arguing it had been unbalanced and unfair. If it were to return now, Moscow would want its terms changed. Moscow’s suggestion in talks yesterday to involve the United Nations in getting that agreement made was dismissed by Kyiv as a cynical ploy to slow discussions further because Russia has a veto at the U.N. Security Council.
Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian presidency, said of Russia, citing the United Nations: “If Russia prefers to see the UN there, this can only indicate that they have some leverage over the United Nations – the right of veto in the Security Council. If they exercise the veto right to halt decisions they don’t like, this will make the negotiation process much more difficult, or even impossible”.
On the other hand, Russia said it distrusted Ukraine on a Black Sea deal, with its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claiming, “Our position is simple. We cannot take [Zelensky] at his word.”
Meanwhile, the war rolls on. Both Ukraine and Russia accused each other of bombing civilians overnight, with several allegedly killed and injured in respective strikes against apartment buildings and civilian vehicles. Officially, both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians in airstrikes and insist any such deaths by their own forces are accidental, or caused by the other side shooting down missiles and drones before they reach their intended targets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due in Paris on Wednesday for meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron. This is to prepare for wider meetings on Thursday of the so-called coalition of the willing, a group of mostly European states who say they may be willing to step in and provide security guarantees to Ukraine if the United States is set on a peace that Europe finds disagreeable.
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