The White House said Tuesday that both Ukraine and Russia have agreed to stop using force in the Black Sea – a deal in principle that the Kremlin says comes with several conditions before it can be implemented.
US officials held a series of separate meetings with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Saudi Arabia in recent days. The White House outlined the agreements it said the US struck with Russia and Ukraine in two separate, but very similar statements on Tuesday.
Both said that the US and each of the respective countries “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.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed in a news conference in Kyiv that Ukraine has agreed to stop using military force in the Black Sea. However, the Kremlin’s statement added that it would only implement the deal when restrictions on its banks and food and fertilizer exports are lifted.
The sanctions were imposed after Moscow launched its unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On Tuesday afternoon, US President Donald Trump told reporters that his administration was looking at Russia’s conditions. “We’re thinking about all of them right now. There are five or six conditions. We are looking at all of them,” the US president said at the White House.
In his nightly address, Zelensky accused Moscow of trying to deceive mediators by adding new terms. “They are already trying to twist the agreements and actually deceive both our mediators and the whole world,” he said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN that Russia wants the deal to be fair. “It is important to remember that actually last time we attempted to implement Black Sea deal. We fulfilled all the obligations, but obligations about us were forgotten and were not fulfilled. So this time it’s important it’s a balanced deal,” he said.
The White House’s statements on the agreement with Russia made no explicit mention of Moscow’s conditions but the US appeared to have offered different rewards to Kyiv and Moscow for sticking to their side of the bargain.
It included a promise that it would “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” – a possible indication of willingness by the US to lift some of its strict economic sanctions.
The details and timeline of relaxing restrictions remain unclear, as does the future of European sanctions. Kyiv and its European allies have previously warned against lifting sanctions before a ceasefire is in place.
The two statements from the White House also said that the US and the two countries – separately – agreed to “develop measures for implementing” an agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Russia and Ukraine.
Zelensky confirmed this part of the agreement, adding that Ukraine had provided the US with a list of energy facilities it would like to be protected.
The Kremlin said it had agreed on the list of Ukrainian and Russian energy facilities that would be off-limits, which included oil refineries, oil and gas pipelines, storage facilities, pumping stations, electricity power plants, substations, transformers, and distributors.
It added that attacks on Russian and Ukrainian nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams would also be prohibited “under the temporary moratorium on attacks on the energy system.” The moratorium began on March 18 and would be in effect for 30 days but could be extended, the Kremlin added.
Zelensky later rejected Moscow’s claim that a pause on attacking the other’s energy infrastructure had begun.
“There is something that the Kremlin is lying about again: that the alleged silence in the Black Sea depends on the issue of sanctions and that the alleged date of the beginning of the silence on energy is 18 March,” he said. Moscow always lies.”
In the statement outlining the results of the talks with Ukraine, the White House 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.”
As the Trump administration pushes for peace in Ukraine, Russian officials have previously indicated interest in US-led proposals, accompanied by strenuous conditions. Earlier this month, after Kyiv accepted a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire covering the entire front line, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he “agreed with the proposal” in spirit but requested a number of concessions before signing up to it.
The White House statements came after lengthy talks between the two sides on a potential ceasefire in Ukraine ended without a joint statement, despite expectations that there would be one.
The Russian state news agency Interfax quoted the first deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Defence and Security Committee, Vladimir Chizhov, as telling state TV channel Rossiya-24 that the statement was “not adopted because of Ukraine’s position.”
“The fact that they sat for 12 hours and seemed to agree on a joint statement, which however was not adopted due to Ukraine’s position, is also very characteristic and symptomatic,” Chizhov told Russia-24, according to Interfax.
Kyiv was not represented in the talks and Chizhov did not give any details on “Ukraine’s position.”
Russian and US officials had met at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh on Monday, the same location where the US delegation met with Ukrainian officials a day earlier. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov described his meeting with Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg on Sunday as “productive and focused.”
Trump has made ending the war in Ukraine one of his priorities. He went as far as promising during his election campaign that he would achieve peace within 24 hours of being in office.
Instead of a full truce, the White House statements on Tuesday outline an agreement to stop using force in the sea, similar to the Black Sea grain initiative that was in place earlier in the war.
Brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, the deal allowed Ukraine to export grain by sea, with ships bypassing a Russian blockade of the country’s Black Sea ports and navigating safe passage through the waterway to Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait in order to reach global markets. Ukraine was one of the world’s leading grain exporters before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The initiative was signed in July 2022 and renewed three times before Russia allowed it to lapse in July 2023, saying that its demands had not been met. Moscow had for some time complained that it had been prevented from adequately exporting its own foodstuffs under the deal.
However, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that Moscow was in favor of resuming the Black Sea Grain Initiative, “with certain conditions.”
Peskov said Tuesday that Moscow was “analyzing” the results of the second round of talks between Russian and US officials. He also said there were currently no plans for Trump and Putin to speak, although he added that a conversation between the two leaders could be arranged “quite quickly.”
Meanwhile, Lavrov told Russia’s Channel One that the US must “order” Zelensky to respect a new Black Sea grain deal, hinting at the belief by Moscow that the US is prepared to strong-arm Kyiv into an agreement.
Indeed, the White House has made it clear to Zelensky and his nation that US military, economic and intelligence support rests on his willingness to participate in Trump’s peace process.
Source: edition.cnn.com
