Ukraine and Russia Reach Deal to Ensure Safe Shipping In the Black Sea

KYIV, Ukraine — The United States said an agreement has been reached to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea as it wrapped up three days of talks Tuesday with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on prospective steps toward peace.

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U.S. experts met separately with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Riyadh, and the White House issued separate joint statements about the talks with Ukraine and Russia. It said the sides 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.”

Details of the prospective deal are yet to be released, but it appears to mark a revival of a 2022 agreement to ensure safe transit via Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey and was halted by Russia the following year. Russia had said the agreement failed to ensure safety of its Black Sea exports.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments Tuesday that Moscow is open to the revival of the agreement but warned that Russian interests must be protected.

In an apparent reference to the Russian demands, the White House statement on the talks with Russia noted that 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.”

The White House statement also mentioned that the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in President Donald Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.

After the Trump-Putin call last week, the White House said the partial ceasefire would include ending attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, a Kremlin official said Tuesday that the talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made.

The three days of meetings — which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations — are part of an attempt to hammer out details on a partial pause in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week — with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.

Future U.S.-Russia contacts expected

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the the outcome of the U.S-Russia talks in Riyadh “has been reported in the capitals” and was currently being “analyzed” by Moscow and Washington, but that the Kremlin has no plans to release further details of what was discussed to the public.

“We’re talking about technical negotiations, negotiations with immersion in details,” Peskov said, adding that while there are currently no plans for Trump and Putin to speak, such a conversation could be quickly organized if the need arises.

“There is an understanding that the contacts will continue, but there is nothing concrete at the moment,” Peskov said. He added that that there are no plans to hold a three-way meeting between Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine.

Senior Russian lawmaker Grigory Karasin, who took part in the Russia-U.S. talks in Riyadh on Monday, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the conversation was “very interesting, difficult, but quite constructive.”

“We were at it all day from morning until late at night,” Karasin was quoted by the agency as saying on Tuesday.

Cross-border strikes continue

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that Ukraine had “continued deliberate drone strikes against Russia’s civilian energy facilities.”

One Ukrainian drone attack on Monday knocked down a high-voltage power line linking the Rostov nuclear power plant with the city of Tikhoretsk in the southern Krasnodar region, the ministry said, adding that another drone strike had occurred on the Svatovo gas distribution station in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

“Zelenskyy confirms his inability to observe agreements and makes it impossible for outside guarantors of any potential agreements to control him,” the ministry said.

In Ukraine, the number of people injured Monday in a Russian missile strike on the center of the city of Sumy rose to 101 people including 23 children, according to the Sumy regional administration.

The strike on Sumy, across the border from Russia’s Kursk region which was partially occupied by Ukraine since August, hit residential buildings and a school, which had to be evacuated due to the attack.

Meanwhile, Russian forces launched one ballistic missile and 139 long-range strike and decoy drones into Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force. Those attacks affected seven regions of Ukraine and injured multiple people.

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Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.