Kyiv: The United States has concluded separate agreements on Tuesday with Ukraine and Russia to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks by the two countries on the other energy facilities.
The agreements, if they were implemented, would represent the clearest progress to date towards a ceasefire wider than Washington considers a springboard to peace talks to end the three-year war in Russia in Ukraine.
The two countries said they would count on Washington to enforce transactions.
“If the Russians violate that, then I have a direct question for President Trump. If they violate, here are the evidence – we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons, etc.,” the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told journalists at a press conference in kyiv.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of the agreements with Just kyiv, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from Washington to Zelenskiy and his team to do one thing and not the other. ”
The agreements, concluded in Saudi Arabia, follow talks initiated by American president Donald Trump, who promised to quickly set up the war and passed Washington’s position to firmly support Kyiv to a more sympathetic position with Moscow.
Under the agreement with Moscow, Washington has promised to help restore Russian access to markets for its agricultural and fertilizer exports. The Kremlin said it would require certain sanctions.
The discussions followed the phone calls separated last week between Trump and the two presidents, Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin. Putin rejected Trump’s proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine has already approved.
The Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, said that kyiv would consider any Russian military ships outside the eastern part of the Black Sea as a violation and a threat, in which case Ukraine would have the right of self -defense.
Pause of attacks on energy facilities
Russia has attacked the Ukraine electrical network with missiles and drones throughout the war, arguing that civil energy infrastructure is a legitimate target because it helps the ability to fight Ukraine war.
More recently, Ukraine has launched long -range strikes on the Russian oil and gas objectives, which, according to him, provide fuel to Russian troops and income to finance its war effort.
At the start of the war, Russia imposed a de facto naval blockade on Ukraine, one of the largest cereal exporters in the world, which threatened to worsen a global food crisis.
But the maritime battles have only been a relatively small part of the war since 2023, when Russia withdrew its naval forces from the eastern Black Sea after a certain number of successful Ukrainian attacks. Kyiv was able to reopen his ports and resume exports at pre-war levels, despite the collapse of an undeveloped Black Sea Shipping Agreement.
Trump puts pressure on both parties to put a quick end to war, a goal he promised to achieve when he presented himself to the presidency last year.
At the same time, he continues a rapid rapprochement with Russia which, according to Washington and Moscow, could lead to lucrative commercial opportunities.
Ukraine and its European allies fear that Trump will conclude an agreement with hasty with Putin who undermines their security and launches Russian requests, including for kyiv to abandon his NATO ambitions and abandon the entirety of four regions claimed by Russia as his. Ukraine has rejected this as being going.
