Kremlin stipulates maritime ceasefire will start only if it gets sanctions relief on agricultural exports
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea after parallel talks with US negotiators in Saudi Arabia, though the Kremlin said a maritime ceasefire would start only if it received sanction relief on agricultural exports.
Donald Trump said that the US was reviewing the Russian conditions after the Kremlin insisted it had negotiated concessions with the White House that would mark the first major recision of sanctions since the full-scale invasion of 2022.
The warring parties also agreed to implement a previously announced 30-day halt on attacks against energy networks and to expand its scope, but resolving fundamental issues, including any division of territory, remains far off.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, welcomed the developments but said Kyiv did not support weakening sanctions on Russia and voiced concern over talks the US appeared to be having with the Kremlin about a partition of Ukraine.
“We are worried when they talk about us without us,” Zelenskyy said in a media briefing, responding to comments by Donald Trump on Monday, when the US president said: “We’re talking about territory right now.”
Ukrainian negotiators in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, had had no discussions of their own about the future division of territory, Zelenskyy added, saying it appeared that the US had talked to the Kremlin team about dividing Ukraine.
According to reports, Russia has told the US it wants full control of three of the Ukrainian regions it partially occupies: Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
The claims have been consistently rejected by Kyiv, which has only indicated it is prepared to acknowledge the existing de facto Russian occupation along the prevailing lines of control.
The White House published two statements, each containing five main points, four of which were identical. Both “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea – a reference to a ceasefire, though the word itself was not used.
The key difference was that the Russian statement said the US would “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports” by lowering insurance costs and improving access to payment systems and ports.
Trump stopped short of confirming that the US was granting sanctions relief, however, and said that the Kremlin conditions were still under review.
“They will be looking at them, and we’re thinking about all of them right now,” Trump said. “There are about five or six conditions. We’re looking at all of them.”
Zelenskyy was unhappy with this, saying it was “a weakening of our position on sanctions” because it appeared to suggest the US would help Russia improve its economic position while the land and air war continued.
Russia said the maritime ceasefire would come into force only after the “lifting of sanctions restrictions” on the Russian Agricultural Bank and other “financial institutions involved in international trade of food”, and only after they were reconnected to the Swift international payment system.
“The United States will assist in restoring Russian agricultural and fertiliser exports to the global market, reducing the cost of maritime insurance, and expanding access to ports and payment systems to conduct such transaction,” the Kremlin said.
Russia also said it wanted port service restrictions and sanctions on Russian-flagged vessels involved in the trade of food products, including seafood and fertilisers, to be lifted.
A further round of negotiations to extend the ceasefire would “take place soon,” Zelenskyy said, although he was not any more specific on timing. Russia and Ukraine agreed to continue working “toward achieving a durable and lasting peace”, the White House statements said.
Zelenskyy criticised Trump’s personal envoy to Putin, Steve Witkoff, who had said in the run-up to the talks that Russia’s staged referendums in the four Ukrainian regions it partially or completely occupies were legitimate and had demonstrated that “the overwhelming majority” wanted to be “under Russian rule”.
The Ukrainian president said Witkoff’s comments “are very much in line with the messages of the Kremlin”, but he added that he hoped that over time the US negotiator and others in the White House would gradually come to see that the Russian leadership was insincere.
Zelenskyy said there had been no agreement on an unconditional ceasefire because “the Russians didn’t want it” and he believed as the negotiations continued “people will not believe the Russians more and more with every day”.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian state media in a discussion about the Black Sea deal that Moscow wanted the grain and fertiliser market to be “predictable” in order to make a profit “but also because we are concerned about the food security situation in Africa and other countries of the Global South.”
Lavrov on Tuesday night said Zelenskyy did not want to “give in” and he accused Kyiv’s European allies of seeking to “hang like a stone around the neck” of Zelenskyy. Lavrov added that Witkoff’s view about a wider truce was overly optimistic because it did not take into account the “elites of European countries”.
Ukraine said it expected Russia to stop bombing port facilities in Odesa and elsewhere as part of a maritime truce. However, a separate statement released by its defence ministry said Ukraine would consider “the movement of Russian military vessels beyond the eastern Black Sea” to be a violation of the deal.
Over the course of the three-year war, Ukraine has gradually forced the Russian fleet east after a series of sea drone raids and managed to reopen a commercial shipping lane close to the western coast.
Russian exports have also been growing, but the Kremlin complained in the past about the impact of sanctions on its agricultural products and pulled out of a previous Black Sea grain deal in July 2023 that was designed to facilitate food exports even while the war was ongoing.
The ceasefire would begin immediately after the White House released the statements, Zelenskyy said, although the Russian demand for sanctions relief in the Black Sea means the conditions for a halt in fighting at sea have not been accepted by Moscow.
It would initially be self-policed, Ukraine said, although both sides agreed that other countries could become involved in monitoring and safeguarding it. Zelenskyy acknowledged that “we have no faith in the Russians” but said that despite this Kyiv intended to be constructive in its efforts to end the war.
The lack of enforcement mechanisms reflected the fact that “the American side really wanted all of this not to fail, so they did not want to go into many details” – but he said Ukraine would press for further clarity in ongoing discussions.
Ukraine believes Turkey or a Middle Eastern country such as Saudi Arabia could become involved in protecting security in the Black Sea, while European countries could help with energy and maritime monitoring, Zelenskyy added.
On Monday, Trump had also said the US had been talking to the Kremlin about “power plant ownership” – a reference to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian occupation.
The US president has expressed an interest in taking control of the plant, the largest in Europe, even though it is located directly on the frontline. Zelenskyy, however, said on Tuesday that this had not been part of this round of negotiations between Ukraine and the US.
Later on Tuesday, Russian news agency Tass reported that Moscow’s foreign ministry had said the nuclear power plant, which has been shut down since autumn 2022, could not be transferred to Ukraine “or any other country”. Its comments followed “media speculation”, Tass added.
Source: The Guardian
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