Russia negotiates a Black Sea truce to resume Ukrainian grain exports

MoscowThe US and Russian delegations have been meeting in Riyadh for nearly 12 hours to discuss a possible partial ceasefire agreement in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian negotiating team, led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, remains in the Saudi Arabian capital, awaiting further contacts after holding a bilateral meeting with US representatives on Sunday evening.

Vladimir Putin doesn't want to rush and won't rush, even if Donald Trump is in a hurry.The Kremlin maintains its strategy of moving slowly in talks with the United States.A possible agreement on a ceasefire in the Black Sea and the implementation of the truce on energy infrastructure is on the table. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow's priority is "the safety of navigation" in the Black Sea.

During the day, however, one of the Russian envoys, Senator Grigory Karasin, warned that "not all negotiations necessarily end with large-scale agreements." Later, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recommended not relying on "breakthroughs." And finally, Peskov reinforced this by adding that "no document signing" was expected at the end of the meeting.

Ukrainian Presidential Office advisor Serhiy Leshchenko explained that the delegation expects the meeting between the United States and Russia to end and indicated that the talks could be extended. He said that technical issues are currently being discussed, including talks about a possible truce on attacks on river and maritime infrastructure. "We are talking about a mutual ceasefire: we do not attack their infrastructure, including river infrastructure, and they do not attack ours: the ports of Kherson, Mykolaiv, and the ports of the Odessa region," he said in an interview on Ukrainian television.

The so-called grain agreement, mediated by Türkiye and the UN, was in effect between the summers of 2022 and 2023, and allowed Ukraine to safely export grain through the Black Sea. The intention was to avoid a global food crisis because Ukrainian wheat, corn, and other products are key to global supplies. Russia, in addition to repeatedly bombing ports such as Odessa and Mykolaiv during that time, eventually broke the pact, arguing that its demands had not been met.

For the United States, getting out of Riyadh by extracting a commitment from Kiev and Moscow to halt attacks on the Black Sea is very important. Faced with restraint from Russian leaders, US representatives insist day after day on publicly announcing the agenda and objectives of each meeting, and setting deadlines for a definitive ceasefire. According to Bloomberg, The White House has set April 20 as the date for the end of the fighting to become a reality, coinciding with Easter.. Unlike previous conversations, this time the participants will have, a priori, less political weight.

In the call between Putin and Trump last Tuesday, "expert groups" were mentioned. New York Times The Russian delegation reports that the US special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg (not very favorable to Moscow, who prefers the praise and harmony of the other envoy, Steve Witkoff), Michael Anton, director of political planning, and members of the team of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz will speak.

Despite the understanding about the technical nature of the discussion, experts assure that the Russian delegation is made up of two men with a clearly political profile. In addition to the head of the Russian Senate's International Affairs Committee, Grigori Karasin, the delegation also includes Sergei Beseda, advisor to the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly the KGB).

Truce on energy infrastructure

The other issue the Russian envoy referred to, the truce on energy infrastructure, is of concern to the Ukrainian delegation. Kiiv wants to establish mechanisms to verify that energy facilities are not attacked., after both sides accused each other of doing so in recent days, in addition to extending the ceasefire on civilian infrastructure. Moscow took the right path, declaring a unilateral pause in bombing only targeting energy, despite Washington also speaking of halting attacks on infrastructure. Volodymyr Zelensky has not accepted it for the moment, pending details.

Russia has warned of retaliation if Ukraine violates its truce on energy facilities. The Kremlin opens the door to the possibility of a new call between Trump and Putin, if this occurs. The Russian government continues to praise its American partners, describing last Tuesday's phone call as "trustworthy, frank, and constructive," while applauding the new administration's "tone" compared to that of the Biden administration.

However, they don't want to let pigeons fly. "We're only at the beginning of the journey," spokesman Peskov says of the results of the negotiations with the United States, adding that "serious and difficult work still remains." The Kremlin likes the sound it gets when Steve Witkoff approves the illegal referendums on Russian accession in the occupied Ukrainian provinces or when Trump validates Moscow's version of the encirclement of Kiev's troops in the Kursk region. But the negotiations haven't even begun, and in Riyadh, there's just one more game being played, which Putin hopes will be played at his pace.