In a significant development, Russia and Ukraine have reached an agreement to cease attacks in the Black Sea, according to U.S. officials.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hailed the agreement as “the right steps” toward de-escalation, while Russia’s foreign minister emphasized that Moscow would require “guarantees” before fully committing to the deal.
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to halt military strikes on vessels in the Black Sea, the United States has announced after talks with both sides in Saudi Arabia.
The White House said on Tuesday that Moscow and Kyiv 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”.
The agreements could represent the most significant step yet towards a broader ceasefire in the more than three-year Russia-Ukraine war, but it was not immediately clear when or how the partial truce would take effect.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who was a member of his country’s delegation in Riyadh, confirmed Kyiv had agreed to the partial ceasefire, specifying that it included attacks on Black Sea shipping and energy infrastructure.
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He warned in a Facebook post that Kyiv would view any movements of Russian warships “outside the eastern part” of the Black Sea as a violation of the agreement to stop the “use of force”.
In such an instance, Ukraine would have the “full right to exercise right to self-defence”, he said, calling for “additional technical consultations” to hammer out the details on how the deal would be implemented and monitored.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the agreement as “the right steps”, claiming that Ukrainian and US officials had agreed a third party “from Europe or, for example, Turkey” could oversee the sea truce, while “someone from the Middle East” could monitor the moratorium on attacks on energy infrastructure.
Zelenskyy signalled that if Russia violated the agreement, he would seek more backing from the US. “If they violate, here is the evidence – we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons,” he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country did not trust Ukraine. “We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of agreements with just Kyiv, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from Washington to Zelenskyy and his team to do one thing and not the other,” he said.
“It’s clear that when Donald Trump said he had a plan to end the war within 24 hours after taking office, he perhaps misunderstood the differences between the two sides and just how much work would be needed,” an analyst said.
The announcement came after US negotiators held separate talks with Russian and Ukrainian teams that were primarily focused on ending attacks on Black Sea shipping with a view to usher in a wider ceasefire.
During a 12-hour session on Monday, US and Russian officials discussed the possible resumption of the 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement that was supposed to allow Ukraine to ship millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports from its ports.
Moscow pulled out of the initiative, brokered by Turkiye and the United Nations, in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm products and fertilisers.
The US said on Tuesday that it would “restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports, lower maritime insurance costs and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions”.
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Russia did not want a repeat of what happened with the 2022 agreement, an analyst said.
“They’re looking for guarantees and it appears from the White House statement that the United States is willing to provide such guarantees,” she said.
The focus of Tuesday’s deal is a much narrower one than a broad 30-day ceasefire that the US proposed to Russia in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.
Last week, after separate phone calls with Trump, both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy agreed to a 30-day limited ceasefire, pledging not to attack energy infrastructure in each other’s territories.
But both sides have accused the other of carrying out attacks on energy targets in recent days.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin said that Russian and US officials had agreed to work out “measures” aimed at implementing a 30-day ban on strikes on “Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities”.
