THE United States said Tuesday that it had reached a tentative agreement for Ukraine and Russia to stop fighting and ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea in separate talks with both sides, but many details were unresolved, and the Kremlin made the deal conditional on lifting some Western sanctions.
The announcement was made as the U.S. wrapped up three days of talks with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on prospective steps toward a limited ceasefire.
AP reported today that while a comprehensive peace deal still looked 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 that the sides “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”
Details of the prospective deal were not released, but it appeared 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.
“We are making a lot of progress,” U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday at the White House. “So that’s all I can report.”
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 had not 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.”
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy for investment and economic cooperation, hailed the results of the talks as a “major shift toward peace, enhanced global food security and essential grain supplies for over 100 million additional people.”
Trump “is making another global breakthrough by effective dialogue and problem-solving,” he said on X.
But the Kremlin warned in a statement that the Black Sea deal could only be implemented after sanctions against the Russian Agricultural Bank and other financial organizations involved in food and fertilizer trade are lifted and their access to the SWIFT system of international payments is ensured. – March 26, 2025
