The US said Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a truce in the Black Sea and to work out mechanisms for implementing the ban on strikes against energy infrastructure.
In separate statements, the White House said Tuesday that three days of technical-level talks in Saudi Arabia with teams from Russia and Ukraine had yielded agreements “to ensure safe navigation” in the Black Sea. The sides had also agreed to prevent the use of commercial shipping for military purposes, it said.
The US “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,” according to the statement.
Both Ukraine and Russia agreed to work with the US on measures to put the truce on attacks against energy infrastructure into effect, the White House said.
The statements came after the Kremlin earlier Tuesday said that it wouldn’t disclose details of the 12 hours of negotiations between Russian and US officials in the Saudi capital Riyadh. US and Ukrainian officials also held a second round of talks on Tuesday, following discussions on Sunday that Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, had called “productive and focused.”
The US had billed the separate meetings as the next stage in President Donald Trump’s campaign to bring an end to Russia’s more than three-year-long invasion of Ukraine.
The Saudi meetings followed Trump’s separate phone calls last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He secured agreement from the two leaders for the 30-day truce covering energy infrastructure though details of how it would be enforced and monitored were unclear.
The White House statement said the US “remains committed to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.”
The Russia-US dialog was difficult but constructive and covered many issues, Grigory Karasin, a former deputy foreign minister who jointly led the Kremlin’s negotiating team, said Tuesday, according to Tass. Talks will continue and involve the United Nations as well as other countries, he said.
Turkey and the United Nations mediated talks on a grain-export deal from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in 2022-2023 that collapsed when Russia withdrew.
Ukraine unconditionally supports the idea of a full ceasefire with Russia that goes beyond the energy truce, the nation’s envoy to the US said.
“We embrace it wholeheartedly,” Ambassador Oksana Markarova said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “We need Russia to agree to that,” she said, adding “it takes two to dance.”
Source: Bloomberg