The United States announced on Tuesday that an agreement was reached to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea, when it ended three days of talks with the Ukrainian delegation and Russia in Saudi Arabia regarding potential steps towards limited suspension of weapons.
While a comprehensive peace agreement still looks distant, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky praised these conversations as early “proper steps” towards peaceful settlement throughout the war, which recently started the fourth year.
“These are the first steps – not the first, but initial – with this presidential administration towards the total end of the war and the possibility of full suspension of weapons, as well as steps towards a sustainable and honest peace agreement,” he said at a press conference.
American experts met separately with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in the capital of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, and the White House said in separate statements after talks with Ukraine and Russia that the parties “agreed to provide safe navigation, eliminating the use of force and preventing the use of commercial ships for military purposes for military purposes.”
Details of the potential contract have not yet been published, but it seems that after another attempt to provide safe shipping of the Black Sea Contract 2022 It was broken by the UN and Turkey, but Detained by Russia Next year.
When Moscow withdrew from this agreement in 2023, she complained that a parallel agreement was not honored to promote obstacles for Russian food and fertilizer export. It was found that the restrictions on shipping and insurance hinder his agricultural trade. KIV accused Moscow of violating the contract, delaying ship inspections. After Russia suspended its part of the contract, it regularly attacked southern ports and storage places for Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrow said on Tuesday in television comments that Moscow is now open to the revival of the Sailing Agreement from the Black Sea, but he warned that Russian interests must be protected.
The White House said visible to Moscow's demands that the United States would “help Russia restore access to the global market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs and increase access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”
Russia wants to relieve sanctions
The Kremlin warned in a statement that the Black Sea agreement can only be implemented after sanctions against Rosselkhozbank and other financial organizations involved in trade in food and fertilizers, and their access to the international payment system.
It also depends on raising sanctions against Russian food and fertilizer exporters and the removal of restrictions on the export of agricultural equipment to Russia, said Kremlin. He also emphasized that commercial ship checks would be necessary to ensure that they were not used for military purposes.
Zelenskyy is the best at the request of Russia to raise sanctions, saying: “We believe that it weakens our position.”
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A senior official in the Ukrainian government, who is directly familiar with the talks and spoke provided anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly comment, said that Kiev's delegation did not agree to raise the sanction as a condition of the sea suspension and that Russia did nothing to justify sanctions.
The official also stated that European countries are not involved in discussions about sanctions, despite sanctions under the European Union's responsibility.
The Ukrainian Defense Minister Rusterov warned that Kiev would see the distribution of Russian ships in the Western Black Sea as “a violation of a commitment to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and a threat to the national security of Ukraine.”
“In this case, Ukraine will have the full right to exercise () the right to self-defense,” he said.
Stopping the strokes of energy infrastructure
The White House also said that the parties agreed to develop funds regarding the implementation of the agreement reached in the calls of the US President Donald Trump of Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to prohibit strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.
Conversations in Riyadh, which did not cover direct Russian-Ukrainian contact, were part of the attempt to detect the details of a partial break in the fight in Ukraine, which began with the invasion of Moscow in 2022.
The fight was to fight to achieve even a limited, 30-day suspension of weapons-which both sides agreed fundamentally last week, even when attacking with each other with drones and shells.
After Putin Trump Call last week, the White House said that partial weapon suspension includes the end of attacks on “energy and infrastructure”, while the Kremlin emphasized that the contract was revived by “energy infrastructure”. The Tuesday's statement of the White House returned to the wording used by Russia.
Zelenskyy noticed that there are significant uncertainty.
“I think there will be a million questions and details,” he said, adding that responsibility for potential violations also remains unclear.
He emphasized that Ukraine is open to a full, 30-day weapon suspension, which Trump proposed, confirming that Kijv is “ready to quickly go to the unconditional suspension of weapons.”
The United Kingdom called on Russia on Tuesday to be agreed to “full, immediate and unconditional arms” proposed by Ukraine.
The British Foreign Affairs Office stated in a statement that he has close contact with the United States and Ukraine after the talks at Riyadh. He thanked the US for efforts to post arms suspension agreements.
“President Zelenskyy has already shown that Ukraine is a party of peace, proposing a full, immediate and unconditional suspension of weapons,” said foreign affairs. “We hope that President Putin will agree without further delay.”
Russia Putin laid a complete suspension of weapons after armed wrestling to Kiev and suspension of military mobilization of Ukraine – demands rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies.
The United States noticed their commitment to help in the exchange of prisoners of war, release of civilian detainees and the return of forced Ukrainian children.
The Ukrainian defense minister, Ukrainian, emphasized the need for additional technical consultations as soon as possible to agree all the details and aspects of the implementation, monitoring and control of contracts.
Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters: “There is an understanding that contacts will continue, but now there is nothing specific.”
The senior Russian legislator Grigory Karasin, who took part in Russia-use in Riyadh on Monday, said the Russian press agency Rii Novosti that the conversation was “very interesting, difficult, but quite constructive.”
“We were in this all day from morning to late night,” said Karasin.