The United States said on Tuesday that they had made a preliminary agreement for Ukraine and Russia to fight and to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea in separate conversations with both sides. But many details are unsolved and the Kremlin has made the deal dependent on lifting some western sanctions.
The announcement was made when the United States had completed three days of discussions with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia in relation to prospective steps to a limited ceasefire.
While a comprehensive peace agreement was still looking far away, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the talks as the early “real steps” for a peaceful settlement of the comprehensive war, which recently joined his fourth year.
“These are the first steps – not the very first, but the first – with this presidential administration in order to completely end the war and the possibility of complete ceasefire as well as steps to a sustainable and fair peace treaty,” he said at a press conference.
US experts met separately with the Ukrainian and Russian representatives in the Saudi capital Riyadh, and the White House said in separate statements after the talks with Ukraine and Russia that the pages “prevent violence to ensure safe navigation and prevent the application of merchant ships for military purposes in the Black Sea”. “
Details of the potential offer still have to be published, but another attempt to mark the safe Black Sea ship after an agreement from 2022, which was conveyed by the United Nations and Turkey, but was stopped by Russia next year.
“We are making a lot of progress,” said US President Donald Trump in the White House on Tuesday. “It’s all I can report.”
When Moscow retired from the shipping contract in 2023, a parallel agreement had not been honored to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer. The restrictions in relation to shipping and insurance disabled his agricultural trade. Kyiv accused Moscow of violating the deal by delaying the inspections of the ships.
After Russia suspended its part of the deal, the southern ports and cereal practice of Ukraine regularly attacked.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in television comments on Tuesday that Moscow is now open to the revival of the Black Sea shipping contract, warned that Russian interests must be protected.
In an obvious reference to Moscow’s requirements, the White House said that the USA will “help to restore the access of the Russia to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs and to improve access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”
Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for investments and economic cooperation, welcomed the results of the talks as a “big change towards peace, increased global nutritional security and essential grain supply for over 100 million additional people”.
Trump “makes another global breakthrough through an effective dialogue and problem solving,” he said to X.
Russia wants to make sanctions easier
In a statement, however, the Kremlin warned that the Schwarzmeer deal can only be implemented after sanctions against the Russian Agrarbank and other financial organizations that are involved in the trade in food and fertilizers, and access to the fast system of international payments is ensured.
The agreement also depends on lifting the sanctions against Russian food and fertilizer exporters and eliminating the restrictions for the exports of agricultural equipment to Russia, said the Kremlin. It was also emphasized that inspections of commercial ships would be necessary to ensure that they are not used for military purposes.
Zelenskyy was bursting with Russia’s demand for sanctions and said: “We believe that this would weaken our position.”
Nevertheless, Trump stated that the United States was thinking about the conditions of the Kremlin: “We are thinking about everyone.”
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A high -ranking civil servant of the Ukrainian government, who is directly familiar with the conversations and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not justified to comment publicly, said the Kyiv delegation did not agree to lift sanctions as a condition for a maritime ceasefire and Russia was doing nothing to justify a sanction rollback.
The official also said that European countries are not involved in the sanction discussions, although sanctions are the responsibility of the European Union.
The Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov warned that Kyiv would suffer the use of Russian warships in the western Black Sea as a “violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and as a threat to the national security of Ukraine.
“In this case, Ukraine will have a full right to exercise the right to self -defense,” he said.
Stipment
The White House also explained that the parties agreed to develop measures to implement an agreement that was hit in the professions of US President Donald Trump with Zelenskyy and Putin to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.
The conversations in Riad, which did not contain a direct Russian-Ukrainian contact, were part of an attempt to hammer details about a partial break in the fights in Ukraine, which began with Moscow in 2022.
It was a struggle to achieve a limited 30-day arms arrest-this in principle approved both sides last week, even if they continue to attack drones and rockets.
After calling Trump-Putin last week, the White House said that the partially ceasefire would include the termination of attacks on “energy and infrastructure”, while the Kremlin emphasized that the agreement refers to “energy infrastructure”. The white house’s explanation on Tuesday was returned to the wording used by Russia.
The Kremlin, who accused Ukraine, published the agreement that the strikes to stop the strikes for the energy infrastructure, published a list of energy facilities on Tuesday that had stopped a 30-day strike on March 18. It warned that each party was free to decide against the other side of violations of the other side.
Zelenskyy found that significant uncertainties remain.
“I think there will be a million questions and details,” he said, adding that responsibility for potential violations also remains unclear.
He emphasized that Ukraine is open to a complete, 30-day armistice that Trump suggested, and confirmed that Kyiv “is ready to quickly move to an unconditional ceasefire”.
On Tuesday, Great Britain asked Russia to agree to the “complete, immediate and unconditional ceasefire” proposed by Ukraine.
The British foreign office announced in a statement that after completing the talks in Riyadh, it was in close contact with the United States and Ukraine. It thanked the United States for its efforts to convey the ceasefire agreements.
“President Zelenskyy has already shown that Ukraine is the peace party by suggesting a complete, immediate and unconditional ceasefire,” said the foreign office. “We hope that President Putin will immediately agree with this.”
Russia’s Putin has made Kyiv and a suspension of the military mobilization of Ukraine dependent on the stop of weapon stores – demands that are rejected by Ukraine and its western allies.
The United States found its commitment to reach the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civil prisoners and the return of violent Ukrainian children.
In other developments, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned in a statement that Moscow would not agree to give up control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe that Russia stated in the first days of the invasion.
Trump proposed that Zelenskyy was considered to transfer ownership at the Ukraine power plants for long -term security to the USA, while the Ukrainian leader expressly talked about Zaporizhzhia’s work last week.
