Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a ceasefire in the Black Sea, the White House has said, following an intense round of negotiations in Saudi Arabia as Donald Trump pushes for a full peace deal to end Vladimir Putin’s three-year invasion.
A US delegation has engaged in separate talks with officials from Moscow and Kyiv since Sunday. Two meetings with the Ukrainians came on either side of a marathon 12-hour discussion with Moscow on Monday, described as “challenging” but “useful” by a member of Russia’s delegation.
Kyiv and Moscow both agreed to “ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea”, the White House announced on Tuesday. The agreements, if implemented, would represent the clearest progress yet towards a wider ceasefire, but both countries said they would rely on Washington to enforce the agreement.
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.
The White House statement also mentioned that the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in President Trump’s calls with Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky last week to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine. In that call, Putin rejected Trump’s proposal for a full ceasefire lasting 30 days, which Ukraine had previously endorsed.
Although, given the difficulty in bringing into force the halt to strikes on energy infrastructure, it remains to be seen how effective the latest deal will be.
The White House published two statements, in which most of the points were identical. 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.
Mr Zelensky appeared unhappy at this, citing “a weakening of our position on sanctions”. Western nations have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia’s economy over the war in Ukraine.
“If the Russians violate this [Black Sea deal], then I have a direct question for President Trump. If they violate, here is the evidence – we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons, etc,” Mr Zelensky told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said: “We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of agreements with just Kyiv, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from Washington to Zelensky and his team to do one thing and not the other.”
Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov later said that the movement of any Russian vessels out of the eastern Black Sea would be seen as a ceasefire violation. “In this case, Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defense,” Mr Umerov said in the statement on X (Twitter).
Both parties will also welcome the involvement of third-party countries in implementing the energy and sea ceasefires, and they will continue to work towards a “durable and lasting peace”, the White House said.
Russia has attacked Ukraine’s power grid with missiles and drones throughout the war, arguing that civil energy infrastructure is a legitimate target because it helps Ukraine’s warfighting capability. More recently, Ukraine has been launching long-range strikes on Russian oil and gas targets, which it says provide fuel for Russian troops and income to fund its war effort.
But maritime battles have been only a comparatively small part of the war since 2023, when Russia withdrew its naval forces from the eastern Black Sea after a number of successful Ukrainian attacks. Kyiv was able to reopen its ports and resume exports at around pre-war levels, despite the collapse of a previous UN-brokered Black Sea shipping agreement.
