A series of separate meetings between U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials entered a third day as American negotiators returned to discussions with their Ukrainian counterparts in the Saudi Arabian capital, continuing talks with Kyiv officials that began Sunday on a possible cease-fire in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, a Kremlin spokesman said on Tuesday that talks between US and Russian officials in Riyadh the day before would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but no specific plans had been drawn up.
The three days of meetings, which have not included direct Russian-Ukrainian talks, are part of an attempt to hammer out details of a partial suspension of the war in Ukraine.
Even a limited 30-day ceasefire that Moscow and Kyiv agreed in principle last week has proven difficult to achieve, as both sides have continued to attack each other with drones and missiles.
Russia and Ukraine also have different interpretations of what a possible partial cease-fire would look like and have not agreed on what targets would be included in a suspension of strikes — even after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with leaders of both countries about advancing the agreement.
Yet despite numerous obstacles—the White House said a partial ceasefire would include an end to attacks on “energy resources and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin said the agreement more narrowly covered “energy infrastructure”—efforts to ensure safe commercial shipping in the Black Sea appear to have received principled support from both sides, although no specific agreements have been announced.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state-run Channel One on Tuesday that the Russian and U.S. delegations in Riyadh discussed “primarily issues of safe shipping in the Black Sea,” a major shipping corridor where Russia and Ukraine have ports and coastlines.
Mr Lavrov also said Moscow was ready to revive – “in some form acceptable to all” – a 2022 deal that would allow Ukraine to ship grain via the Black Sea to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where famine was a growing threat and high food prices had pushed more people into poverty.
The landmark Black Sea grain initiative was launched by the UN and Turkey in the summer of 2022. Moscow suspended it in July 2023 until its demands for Russian food and fertilizer supplies around the world were met.
Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that U.S.-Ukrainian talks in Riyadh on Sunday included “shipping and infrastructure security, including the security of the (Ukrainian) ports of Odessa, Mykolaiv and Kherson.”
Mr Leshchenko added that the Ukrainian delegation would brief Mr Zelensky after talks with the US delegation resumed on Tuesday, adding: “Ukraine is ready to support initiatives that will make diplomacy a means of pressure to force Russia to stop the war.”
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the results of the Riyadh talks “were reported to the capitals” and were currently being “analyzed” by Moscow and Washington, but the Kremlin does not plan to disclose to the public any details of the issues discussed.
“We are talking about technical negotiations, negotiations with a deep dive into the details,” Peskov said, adding that although there are currently no plans to hold talks between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, such a conversation could be quickly organized if the need arises.
“There is an understanding that contacts will continue, but there is nothing concrete yet,” Peskov said. He added that there are no plans to hold a trilateral meeting between Russia, the United States and Ukraine.
Senior Russian politician Grigory Karasin, who took part in Russian-American talks in Riyadh on Monday, told Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti that the conversation was “very interesting, difficult, but very constructive.”
“We were doing this all day, from morning until late evening,” the agency quoted Mr. Karasin as saying on Tuesday.
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Mr. Karasin said that the positions of Moscow and Washington do not always coincide, but both sides will continue to look for ways to cooperate, since there is now an understanding that cooperation is necessary to resolve the conflict.
He added that negotiations between expert groups from Russia and the United States could continue.
This happened against the backdrop of the fact that the number of people injured on Monday as a result of a Russian missile strike on the center of the Ukrainian city of Sumy has risen to 101 people, including 23 children, the Sumy regional administration reported.
The strike on Sumy, which lies across the border from Russia's Kursk region, which has been partly occupied by Ukraine since August, damaged residential buildings and a school, which had to be evacuated because of the attack.
Meanwhile, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russian forces launched one ballistic missile and 139 long-range strike and decoy drones into Ukraine overnight. The attacks affected seven regions of Ukraine.
Two people were injured as a result of a drone falling into a warehouse in the Poltava region, the head of the administration, Volodymyr Kogut, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday, and two more people were injured outside of Zaporizhia, the head of the region reported.
One person was injured as a result of a Russian drone attack in Kherson, the head of the city administration Roman Mrochko wrote on Telegram on Tuesday.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
