Talks held in Saudi Arabia with delegations from the U.S. and Russia have once again failed to produce a comprehensive ceasefire agreement between Moscow and Kyiv. Despite this, in a separate agreement, both Ukraine and Russia have agreed with the United States to solidify the informal truce already existing in the Black Sea region.
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03-29, 2025The talks also provided more information about the plan announced last week, which aims to prevent Ukraine and Russia from attacking each other's energy infrastructure. The United States, and its President Donald Trump, are eager to end the war in Ukraine, which has been ongoing for more than three years since the full-scale Russian invasion.
Saudi Arabia has hosted several rounds of talks over the past month involving delegations from the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine aimed at ending the conflict, although never bringing all three nations together in the same room. In a statement released after the Riyadh talks, the U.S. said that it had reached an agreement with Russia and Ukraine to "ensure freedom of navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of merchant vessels for military purposes, securing the Black Sea."
Last week, the U.S. claimed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other's energy infrastructure, which was hailed as a breakthrough. However, the White House clarified this progress in a statement released after Tuesday's Riyadh talks, stating: "The United States and Russia agreed to develop measures to implement the agreement reached between President Trump and President Putin to prohibit attacks on Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities." This suggests that while some progress has been made, no agreement has yet been finalized.
While some analysts welcomed Tuesday's statement regarding a Black Sea truce as a concrete step towards peace, others argued that an "informal truce" already exists in the region. Vlad Mykhnenko, a professor of geographical and political economy at Oxford University, told ABC News: "It's a mutually beneficial situation, Ukrainians don't attack Russian merchant vessels, Russians don't attack Ukrainian merchants. So, there is already an informal truce, and it seems to be holding quite well. So this is really just discussion about something that is rather inconsequential."
Russia moved the bulk of its Black Sea naval fleet from Sevastopol, in the Crimean Peninsula, to Novorossiysk last year. The decision to move the ships to a port on mainland Russia, after Moscow's military annexed Crimea in 2014, was considered a major victory for Ukraine, which, despite not having a navy, has managed to sink dozens of vessels through aerial attacks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, commenting on state television, said that his country cannot trust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "We need clear guarantees. Given the regrettable experience of agreements with Kyiv, guarantees can only be the result of Washington ordering Zelenskyy and his team to do one thing and not another," Mr. Lavrov said.
In a sign of the difficult negotiations, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement after the U.S. issued its statement saying that the Black Sea truce would only take effect after several financial sanctions related to trade were lifted. Mr. Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv that the latest agreement was a step in the right direction. "It is too early to say that it will work, but these are the right meetings, the right decisions, the right steps," he said. "After that, no one can accuse Ukraine of not moving towards sustainable peace."
President Trump told reporters on Tuesday that the United States would work with "other countries" to monitor the Black Sea truce. He said the United States would continue to have "in-depth talks" with Russia and Ukraine. "I would say it's going well, but this is a situation we shouldn't even be thinking about," he said. "There's tremendous animosity. There's a lot of hatred, as you probably see."
