(BOE Report) – U.S. and Russian officials began talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday aimed at making progress towards a broad ceasefire in Ukraine with Washington eyeing a separate Black Sea maritime ceasefire deal before securing a wider agreement.
The talks, which followed U.S. negotiations with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, come as U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his drive to end the three-year-old conflict after he last week spoke to both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here are some of the issues that Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine are discussing:
ENDING ATTACKS ON ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE
Putin and Trump agreed last week “that the movement to peace will begin” with a 30-day pause in attacks on Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities, according to the White House.
That narrowly defined ceasefire was quickly cast into doubt, however, with Moscow saying Ukraine hit an oil depot in southern Russia while Kyiv said Russia had struck hospitals and homes, and knocked out power to some railways.
Zelenskiy said Kyiv would draw up a list of facilities that could be subject to the partial ceasefire. That list could include not only energy, but also rail and port infrastructure, he said. A moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes could favour Moscow more than Kyiv, given it would prevent Ukraine from conducting long-range strikes on Russian oil facilities, a key way that it has inflicted pain on its enemy.
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
A U.S. statement said Trump had suggested in his call with Zelenskiy that the U.S. could help run, and possibly own, Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and energy infrastructure.
Zelenskiy said he and Trump discussed the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of risking an accident at the plant with their actions.
Zelenskiy said Kyiv would be ready to discuss U.S. involvement in modernizing the plant if it were returned to Ukraine.
Ukraine would benefit in the long term from regaining control of the facility, which generated 20% of its entire power generation output before the war.
However, Zelenskiy has warned it would take two and a half years to get the plant online because of the many technical challenges it faces. Industry sources say it would also take huge sums in investment.
BLACK SEA SHIPPING
Putin, the Kremlin said, had “responded constructively” to a Trump initiative on protecting Black Sea shipping and they agreed to begin negotiations on that.
Turkey and the United Nations helped mediate the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal struck in July 2022 that allowed the safe export of nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea despite the war.
Russia withdrew from the agreement after a year, complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced serious obstacles.
The World Bank’s global commodities outlook from April 2024 says that despite the Black Sea shipping risks, both Russia and Ukraine were shipping grain to global markets without major problems.
PRISONER EXCHANGES
Russia and Ukraine exchanged 175 prisoners of war each, both sides said on Wednesday and Russia handed over an additional 22 heavily wounded Ukrainian prisoners in what the Russian defence ministry called a goodwill gesture.
Zelenskiy described the exchange as one of the largest of its kind and said the 22 Ukrainians were “severely wounded warriors and those whom Russia persecuted for fabricated crimes”.
NATO MEMBERSHIP
Putin has said he wants Ukraine to officially drop its ambitions to join NATO.
Ukraine defines joining NATO as a goal in its constitution and says that membership of the bloc would be the best form of security guarantee that it can receive as part of a peace deal. Last month, John Coale, Trump’s deputy Ukraine envoy, said the United States had not ruled out potential NATO membership for Ukraine – or a negotiated return to its pre-2014 borders – contradicting comments made a day earlier by the U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth had told Ukraine’s military allies in Brussels a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and that the U.S. did not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war, sparking concern that the U.S. had made concessions even before the start of talks.
Trump has said he does not believe Russia would “allow” Ukraine NATO membership. Trump blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for pushing the idea, although it was first backed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2008.
UKRAINE’S POST-WAR SECURITY
With NATO membership not an immediate prospect, Ukraine is seeking guarantees built into any peace deal about its long-term security – but that puts it at odds with what the Kremlin wants from a deal.
Kyiv and its backers in Europe agree the key to its security is a strong Ukrainian military. Moscow meanwhile has said one condition of a peace deal is a reduction in Ukraine’s military. Britain and France are pursuing a plan to create a deterrent force of foreign troops, ships and planes based in or around Ukraine after a peace deal is signed. Details of how the force would operate and who will contribute are unclear.
Some Russian officials have said they could not accept such a force.
WESTERN SANCTIONS, ELECTIONS
Putin has said he wants Western sanctions on Russia eased and a presidential election to be held in Ukraine.
Kyiv has not held any elections since 2019 because of wartime martial law and Ukrainian officials say that holding an election during the war would be impossible in practice.
Ukrainian officials say they are a sovereign nation, and it is not Moscow’s place to dictate when they hold their election.
The United States led broad sanctions efforts against Russia under Biden. The steps include measures aimed at limiting its oil and gas revenues, including a cap of $60 per barrel on Russia’s oil exports. Sources have told Reuters the Trump administration has been studying ways it could ease sanctions if Moscow agrees to end the war. However, this month Trump has also raised the prospect of imposing large-scale banking curbs and tariffs on Russia until peace is achieved.
RUSSIAN-HELD TERRITORY
Russia wants to control the entirety of the four eastern Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, plus the Crimean peninsula which it seized and annexed in 2014. Russia’s Kommersant daily cited unnamed sources who attended a private event with Putin last week as saying he wants the U.S. to formally recognise the four regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as part of Russia along with Crimea.
Ukraine says it already recognises that it cannot recapture some occupied Ukrainian territory by force and that it will have to be returned diplomatically over time. It says that it will never recognise Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territory.
UKRAINIAN NATURAL RESOURCES
Kyiv and Washington have been discussing a deal under which the United States would get a financial return from the development of Ukrainian natural resources, in particular rare earths used to manufacture electronics. Efforts to seal the deal stumbled after a disastrous White House meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy at the end of last month. Trump said on March 21 a deal on rare earths would be signed very shortly. Beyond that deal, Ukraine’s gas infrastructure could be of interest to the White House. Ukraine has the world’s third largest underground gas storage capacity. It could import liquefied natural gas from the United States, store it, then ship it to European countries which are seeking alternatives to Russian natural gas.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Don Durfee, Alison Williams and Ros Russell)
