U.S. says deal reached for safe navigation in Black Sea, after talks with Ukraine, Russia

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 are 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.

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 all-out war that recently entered its fourth year.

“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 with Ukraine and Russia that 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 another attempt to ensure safe Black Sea shipping after a 2022 agreement that was brokered by the UN and Turkey, but halted by Russia the next year.

“We are making a lot of progress,” U.S. President Donald Trump claimed 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 hadn’t been honoured. 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 Sergei 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, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for investment and economic co-operation, 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.

Russia wants sanctions eased

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.

The agreement is also conditional on lifting the sanctions against Russian food and fertilizer exporters, and on removing restrictions on exports of agricultural equipment to Russia, the Kremlin said. It also emphasized that inspections of commercial ships would be necessary to ensure they aren’t used for military purposes.

Zelenskyy bristled at Russia’s demand for lifting sanctions, saying, “We believe that it would weaken our position.”

Still, Trump indicated that the U.S. was considering the Kremlin’s conditions: “We’re thinking about all of them right now.”

A senior official in the Ukrainian government, who is directly familiar with the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the Kyiv delegation does not agree to lifting sanctions as a condition for a maritime ceasefire and that Russia has done nothing to warrant a sanctions rollback.

The official also said European countries are not involved in the sanctions discussions, despite sanctions being within the European Union’s responsibility.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov warned that Kyiv would see the deployment of Russian warships in the western Black Sea as a “violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and a threat to the national security of Ukraine.”

“In this case, Ukraine will have full right to exercise (the) right to self-defence,” he said.

Halting energy infrastructure strikes

The White House also said the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in U.S. President Donald Trump’s calls with Zelenskyy and Putin to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.

The talks in Riyadh, which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian contact, were part of an attempt to hammer out details on a partial pause in the fighting in Ukraine, which began with Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which both sides agreed to in principle last week, even while continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.

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 emphasized that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure.” Tuesday’s White House statement reverted to the wording used by Russia.

The Kremlin, which has accused Ukraine of breaching the agreement to stop strikes on energy infrastructure, on Tuesday published a list of energy facilities subject to a 30-day halt on strikes that began on March 18. It warned that each party was free to opt out of the deal in case of violations by the other side.

Zelenskyy noted that significant uncertainties remain.

“I think there will be a million questions and details,” he said, adding that the responsibility for potential violations also remains unclear.

He emphasized that Ukraine is open to a full, 30-day ceasefire that Trump has proposed, reaffirming that Kyiv is “ready to quickly move toward an unconditional ceasefire.”

Britain urged Russia on Tuesday to agree to the “full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire” proposed by Ukraine.

Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement it was in close contact with the United States and Ukraine following the conclusion of talks in Riyadh. It thanked the U.S. for its efforts brokering the ceasefire accords.

“President Zelenskyy has already shown Ukraine is the party of peace by proposing a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire,” the Foreign Office said. “We hope that President Putin will agree to this without further delay.”

Russia’s Putin has made a complete ceasefire conditional on a halt of arms supplies to Kyiv and a suspension of Ukraine’s military mobilization — demands rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies.

The U.S. noted its commitment to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.

In other developments, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned in a statement that Moscow would not agree to surrender control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, that Russia captured in the opening days of the invasion.

Trump suggested that Zelenskyy consider transferring ownership of Ukraine’s power plants to the U.S. for long-term security, while the Ukrainian leader said they specifically talked about the Zaporizhzhia plant in last week’s call.