United States and Russian negotiators meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, have concluded a 12-hour round of talks aimed at securing a partial ceasefire in Ukraine.
The Russian state news agency TASS reported that Monday’s negotiations had drawn to a close after “more than 12 hours of consultations” with a “joint statement” on results expected on Tuesday.
After the talks with Russia, US officials are to hold more talks with Ukrainian negotiators, according to a senior Ukrainian government source cited by the news agency Reuters.
US President Donald Trump said Monday that he expected to seal a US-Ukraine revenue-sharing deal on critical Ukrainian minerals soon and his administration was talking to Kyiv about the prospect of US firms owning Ukrainian power plants.
Monday’s US-Russia talks were primarily focused on ending attacks on Black Sea shipping with a view to ushering in a broader ceasefire that would bring an end to the three-year Russia-Ukraine war.
US officials had already met the Ukrainian team on Sunday to discuss the protection of civilian and energy infrastructure, said Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who led his country’s delegation and called the talks “productive”.
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig said Ukraine was now eager to see Russia agree to a deal that would protect Black Sea shipping, particularly “the cessation of shelling of Ukrainian ports Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv”.
“Now that’s been a major concern for the Ukrainians. Ukraine really wants their ports operating and running, and that’s why initially they proposed a ceasefire on air and sea,” Baig said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Monday that US and Russian officials were discussing the possible resumption of the 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement that was supposed to allow Ukraine to ship millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports from its ports.
Moscow pulled out of the initiative, brokered by Turkiye and the United Nations, in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm products and fertilisers.
No breakthrough expected
“Nobody is holding their breath here expecting any breakthroughs. Even the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said there are no expectations for a breakthrough in Riyadh on Monday,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari reported from Moscow.
“What is expected is that they are going to hammer out details of what Russia is asking for. The Russian delegation has been talking to the US officials for at least the past eight hours, as we understand it, about the details on a 30-day ceasefire agreement when it comes to energy and infrastructure and also the Black Sea initiative,” she added.
Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of the Foreign Relations and International Security Programmes at Ukraine’s Razumkov Centre think tank, said the length of the negotiations pointed to the Russian side once again making “more and more” requests and demands.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Kyiv, he said there was “zero trust between the two sides” and no “possibility for direct talks” between Moscow and Kyiv.
Melnyk said the US could increase its pressure on the Ukrainian government but noted: “If there are no prospects or interest on the Russian side except capitulation of Ukraine, what is the reason for Ukraine to engage in such negotiations?”
Maximalist demands
The focus on the Black Sea is a much narrower one than a broad 30-day ceasefire that the US proposed to Russia in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.
Last week, after separate phone calls with Trump, both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to a 30-day limited ceasefire, pledging not to attack energy infrastructure in each other’s territories.
But both sides have accused the other of carrying out attacks on those specific energy targets in recent days.
The Kremlin said on Monday that Russia was still abiding by the moratorium that Putin had promised Trump despite Kyiv continuing to strike Russian energy facilities.
Ukraine, which said it would only agree to the pause if a formal document was signed, has accused Moscow of flouting its own moratorium.
Nevertheless, Trump has expressed broad satisfaction over the way talks have been going and has been complimentary about Putin’s engagement in the process so far, saying on Saturday that efforts to stop further escalation in the conflict were “somewhat under control”.
But there is scepticism among major European powers over whether Putin is ready to make meaningful concessions or will stick to what they see as his maximalist demands.
Putin said he is ready to discuss peace but Ukraine must officially drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from all of the territory of four eastern and southern Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
Continued attacks
Monday’s talks came after Russia launched its third consecutive overnight air attack on Kyiv, wounding one person and damaging houses in the region around the Ukrainian capital.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia must stop its strikes instead of “making hollow statements about peace” in the wake of a Russian missile attack on a “residential neighbourhood” in the northeastern city of Sumy.
The attack injured almost 90 people, including 17 children, and damaged a school and a hospital, according to Zelenskyy.
“Any diplomacy with Moscow must be backed up by firepower, sanctions and pressure,” Sybiha said on X.
Later on Monday, a cyberattack knocked out the online ticketing system for Ukraine’s state railway service in what Kyiv officials said looked like a Russian attempt to “destabilise” the situation.
Russia, for its part, said it had downed 227 Ukrainian drones in 24 hours as firefighters in its southern region of Krasnodar battled for a fifth day to put out a blaze at an oil depot struck in a Ukrainian drone attack last week.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said on Monday that Ukraine conducted two drone attacks on the Valuika gas distribution station in the Belgorod region on Saturday.
Additionally, it said Ukrainian forces had tried to attack the Glebovskoye gas condensate field in Crimea on Sunday but Russian air defences had repelled the assault.
