KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States said Tuesday an agreement was reached to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea as it wrapped up three days of talks with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on prospective steps toward a limited ceasefire.
While a comprehensive peace deal still looks distant, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the talks as the early “right steps” toward a peaceful settlement of the 3-year-old war.
“These are the first steps — not the very first but initial ones — with this presidential administration toward completely ending the war and the possibility of a full ceasefire, as well as steps toward a sustainable and fair peace agreement,” he said at a news conference.
U.S. experts met separately with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, and the White House said in separate statements after the talks with Ukraine and Russia that the sides have “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”
Detals of the prospective deal are yet to be released, but it appears to mark another attempt to ensure safe Black Sea shipping after a 2022 agreement that was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey but halted by Russia the next year.
When Moscow withdrew from the shipping deal in 2023, it complained that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honored. It said restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade. Kyiv accused Moscow of violating the deal by delaying the vessels’ inspections. After Russia suspended its part of the deal, it regularly attacked Ukraine’s southern ports and grain storage sites.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments Tuesday that Moscow is now open to the revival of the Black Sea shipping deal but warned that Russian interests must be protected.
In an apparent reference to Moscow’s demands, the White House said the U.S. “will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”
The Kremlin warned in a statement the Black Sea deal could only be implemented after sanctions against Rosselkhozbank and other financial organizations involved in food and fertilizer trade are lifted and their access to the SWIFT system of international payments is ensured.
It’s also conditional on lifting the sanctions against Russian food and fertilizer exporters a deal, removing restrictions on exports of agricultural equipment to Russia, the Kremlin said.
Zelenskyy bristled at Russia’s demand for lifting sanctions, saying, “We believe that it would weaken our position.”
A senior Ukrainian official said the Kyiv delegation does not agree to lifting sanctions as a condition for a maritime ceasefire and that Russia has done nothing to have a sanctions rollback. The official also said European countries are not involved in the sanctions discussions, despite sanctions being within the European Union’s responsibility.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov warned that Kyiv would see the deployment of Russian warships in the western Black Sea as a “violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and a threat to the national security of Ukraine.”
“In this case, Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defense,” he said.
Halting strikes on energy infrastructure
The White House also said the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in President Donald Trump’s calls with Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.
