Ukraine and Russia agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea and to hash out the details for halting strikes on energy facilities, the White House said on Tuesday, in what would be the first significant step toward a cease-fire three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
But the deal falls short of a complete pause in combat, which Trump administration officials have been pushing, and it remains unclear how and when such a limited truce would be carried out or how firm was either side’s commitment. Last week, Russia and Ukraine agreed in principle to stop attacking energy facilities, only to quickly accuse each other of continuing such strikes.
It was “too early to say that it will work,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told reporters on Tuesday. “Additional technical consultations” were needed as soon as possible to put the deal in place, added Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defense minister.
And while both Ukraine and Russia confirmed the agreement, which came after three days of intense negotiations in Saudi Arabia, Moscow added significant caveats, at least some of which the United States appeared to agree to while gaining little in return. In a statement, the Kremlin said it would honor the maritime security portion of the deal only after Western countries removed restrictions imposed on Russian agricultural exports after the invasion began in 2022.
The White House pledged in a statement that it would “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports,” among other particulars.
Mr. Zelensky complained that the provision was “a weakening of positions and a weakening of sanctions.” And lifting restrictions on Russia’s agricultural exports would also need the approval of the European Union, which at the moment is unlikely.
Even amid the uncertainty, the White House’s willingness to cede to a Russian demand over Ukrainian objections was the latest sign of President Trump’s increasing alignment with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Trump has long complained without evidence that they were both politically persecuted during a Justice Department investigation into Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and had refused in recent weeks to say it was Russia that started the war by invading Ukraine.
Trump administration officials have expressed interest in broadly improving U.S. relations with Russia. In a summary of a call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin last week, administration officials said the leaders had agreed that an improved relationship “has huge upside,” including “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved.”
While the American administration has drastically changed how it talks about Russia, the U.S. intelligence agencies’ annual review of global threats, released on Tuesday, deemed Russia an “enduring potential threat to U.S. power, presence and global interests.” The report found that Russia had the upper hand in its invasion and had greater leverage to press Ukraine and its supporters to negotiate “an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks.”
Deep mistrust persists between Russia and Ukraine, and U.S. mediators met separately with delegations from both sides in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. After the talks concluded, the White House released two statements saying it had separately struck deals with each on the maritime and energy attacks.
To secure the agreement, the White House appeared to have offered each side assurances on crucial demands. Besides Russia’s agricultural interests, the White House reaffirmed its commitment to some of Ukraine’s longstanding demands, such as facilitating “the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.”
Although the agreements may be a breakthrough in the White House’s efforts to reach a cease-fire, even a limited one, in Ukraine after three years of full-scale war, they appeared to extract no major concessions from Russia. Halting strikes on energy facilities and security in the Black Sea are two goals that the Kremlin has pursued and seen as beneficial.
Moreover, Moscow appeared determined to de-escalate on its own terms. The Kremlin said that it would not abide by the limited cessation of hostilities in the Black Sea unless its state agriculture bank and other financial institutions involved in the trade of food were reconnected to the international payment system, and unless Western companies restored deliveries of agricultural equipment to Russia. It also said it wanted sanctions lifted against its ships and the food trade, as well as the restrictions imposed against Russian fertilizer and food producers.
If the United States meets Russia’s demands, that would be the first step to lift sanctions against the Russian economy, thus tangibly reversing Western policy to increase pressure on the Kremlin and its financial system.
While Mr. Putin has portrayed himself as open to U.S. demands to end the fighting, he rejected an earlier U.S. proposal, accepted by Ukraine, for a complete and immediate 30-day cease-fire.
Mr. Putin had said that a broader truce would have to include a halt to Western military aid to Ukraine and its mobilization efforts — two conditions that are nonstarters for Ukraine, which said they were evidence of the Kremlin’s desire to continue the war.
Whether the partial truce will begin, and hold, remains to be seen. Strikes on energy facilities have been central to each side’s efforts to weaken the other throughout the war. Russia has pounded Ukraine’s power grid, aiming to make life unbearable for civilians, particularly during the frigid winters, and hinder Kyiv’s war effort. Ukraine has repeatedly struck Russian oil facilities to try to choke off revenues fueling Moscow’s military operations.
Against this background, a truce on energy strikes could benefit both nations. It would give Ukraine time to repair its battered energy network, and Moscow would no longer have to contend with further damage to its critical oil facilities.
Russia, however, may gain more from a cease-fire in the Black Sea, where repeated Ukrainian attacks have forced its navy into retreat over the past year.
Both countries rely on the Black Sea for commodity exports. In mid-2022, they brokered a deal allowing Ukraine to ship grain through the sea, but Russia withdrew from the agreement a year later, arguing that Western sanctions were severely limiting its ability to export agricultural products.
Russia then threatened all commercial vessels heading to and from Ukraine, aiming to strangle its shipping exports. In response, Ukraine’s military started a campaign that pushed the Russian Navy out of the western parts of the Black Sea, destroying many of its warships and striking its headquarters in Russian-occupied Crimea. The operation allowed Ukraine to establish a new shipping corridor in the Black Sea and return seaborne grain exports to near-prewar levels.
Mr. Umerov, Ukraine’s defense minister, said that under the deal, “all movement by Russia of its military vessels outside of eastern part of the Black Sea will constitute a violation of the spirit of this agreement,” and that Ukraine would have “full right to exercise right to self-defense.”
The White House statements said both Russia and Ukraine had agreed to “eliminate the use of force in the Black Sea.” But it was not immediately clear whether the deal included a halt on strikes on port infrastructure. Ukrainian officials said such a provision came up during the talks. They have also expressed interest in restarting commercial operations in frontline Ukrainian port cities like Mykolaiv and Kherson, where nearby fighting has forced shutdowns.
Andrii Klymenko, the head of the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies, said he was highly skeptical that the two sides would ever carry out any maritime agreement. “The intentions of the parties are diametrically opposed,” he wrote on Facebook, noting that Kyiv sought to stop Russian strikes on port infrastructure, while Moscow hope to restore the 2022 grain deal that gave Moscow some degree of control over commercial shipping in the Black Sea.
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