Ukraine and Russia officials hold a ceasefire in Saudi Arabia, as US President Donald Trump allegedly wants to obtain a ceasefire in time for Easter.
Kyiv’s delegation sat down with the Washington team in Riyadh on Sunday night, with Moscow following on Monday in what the first such parallel peace talks have been since the early days of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.
After three years of cruel warfare, US officials said Bloomberg This week that Mr. Trump hopes to secure a ceasefire by April 20, a symbolic date on which both Western and Orthodox celebrations of Easter will overlap this year.
However, the Kremlin tempered the hope of a quick ceasefire on Sunday before the Riyadh talks, with spokeswoman Dmitri Peskov warning that the progress of an agreement was unlikely, as it was “only the beginning” of what “difficult” negotiations would be.
Here, The independent Take a look at what to expect from US-led talks in Saudi Arabia, which came a few hours after Russia made seven people-including a five-year-old child-death in overnight strikes on Kyiv, and four people in Donetsk.
A 30-day break on energy attacks
Broadly, the discussions will focus on the details of a 30-day proposed ceasefire about strikes on energy infrastructure-Sowel as a long-term peace agreement.
After a phone call last week, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump agreed that the movement to peace will begin with a 30-day break in attacks on Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities, the White House said.
But that closely defined ceasefire was quickly called into question, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of bombarding his own oil depot in Koursk to undermine the agreement, while also beating hospitals and homes in Ukraine and knocking out the power to some railways.
Nevertheless, Mr. Zelensky said Kyiv will set up a list of facilities that may be subject to a partial ceasefire, including not only energy, but also rail and port infrastructure.
A moratorium on energy facilities can fare Moscow disproportionately, as the Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities were an important route for Kyiv to give the aggressor pain.
A black sea delivery agreement
Mr. Peskov, meanwhile, said Moscow’s main focus on Monday will be on a possible resumption of the unprocessed July 2022 to ensure safe navigation for commercial vessels in the Black Sea.
Despite the fact that Russia unilaterally withdrew later the same year, the Kremlin claimed that Mr. Putin ‘responded constructively’ to a Trump initiative on the shipping of Black Sea and agreed to start negotiating.
In remarks that will do little to kill the European fears that the White House Kremlin propaganda is increasingly parroting, US special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday: ‘I feel it [Mr Putin] Want peace.
‘I think you will see some progress in Saudi Arabia on Monday, especially as it affects a ceasefire of the black sea on ships between both countries. And from there will of course move into a complete ceasefire. ‘
Russian control over the Ukrainian area
Mr. Witkoff said on Friday that he believes that ‘the central issue’ in the conflict and the ‘elephant in the room’ is in peace talks or Mr. Zelensky can recognize the alleged right of Moscow on four ‘Russian-speaking’ Ukrainian regions by Mr. Putin couldn’t call the Kremlin.
While Russia retains a lot of Donetsk and Luhansk, where fights have been raging since 2014, Ukraine retains a large part of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, despite the effort of Mr. Putin to annex all four regions illegally to Sham referenda in September 2022.
Russia’s Commercant Newspaper cited sources that attended a private business opportunity on Tuesday, saying it would like the US to formally acknowledge the four regions – where Ukrainians continue to give their lives to prevent Russian profits – along with Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Ukraine says it already acknowledges that it cannot recycle an occupied Ukrainian area and that it should be returned diplomatically over time – but that Kyiv will never recognize the Russian sovereignty over the Ukrainian area.
On a Sunday asked if the US would accept a peace agreement in which Russia was allowed to retain the Ukrainian area, White House national security adviser said: “We must ask us, is it in our national interest? Is it realistic?
NATO membership and security guarantees
While Ukraine previously suggested that the area could be temporarily ceded in exchange for NATO safety guarantees, Mr. Trump said he did not believe that Russia would “allow” Ukraine to join NATO.
With Moscow also demanding that one condition of a peace agreement should be a reduction in Ukraine’s army, a move of Ukraine is probably unlikely to want to tackle a Western ‘coalition of the willing’ to provide military security guarantees to Kyiv under any peace agreement.
Mr. However, Witkoff rejected this statement on Sunday as “an attitude and an attitude” that he says is based on a “simplistic” idea that European leaders think “we should all be like Winston Churchill”.
And he has delayed the European fear of the risk that Mr. Putin will use any ceasefire to start and launch further attacks on Ukraine and its neighbors, saying, ‘I just don’t see that he wants to take the whole of Europe. This is a very different situation than in World War II. ‘
US ownership of Ukraine’s minerals and energy facilities
Instead, the Trump administration claimed that Washington could deter Russia an interest in the minerals of Ukraine and energy sources to launch future attacks.
While efforts to seal an agreement that gives the US a great stake in the rare earth mineral deposits of Ukraine, the disastrous White House meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky stumbled last month, US president on Friday claimed that an agreement would be signed soon.
The gas infrastructure of Ukraine may also be important to the White House, with Kyiv owning the world’s third largest underground gas storage capacity. In the end, it can import liquid natural gas from the US, store it and send it west to European countries seeking alternatives to Russian gas.
In a recent call with Mr. Zelensky said Mr. Trump also suggested that the US could help to operate and possibly own the four nuclear power plants of Ukraine.
Mr Zelensky said Kyiv will be ready to modernize the US involvement in the modernization of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant-which is the largest in Europe when it is returned to Ukraine. But he warned that it would take two and a half years to get the plant back online.
Prisoner -exchanges
Russia and Ukraine each exchanged 175 prisoners of war, both parties said on Wednesday – with Russia handing over an additional 22 heavily wounded Ukrainian prisoners, in what the Russian Ministry of Defense called a goodwill gesture.
Mr. Zelensky described the exchange as one of the largest of its kind and said that the 22 Ukrainians were “severely wounded warriors and those who persecuted Russia for manufactured crimes”.
Western sanctions and elections
Mr. Putin said he wanted Western sanctions to be alleviated against Russia and that a presidential election should be held in Ukraine.
Kyiv has not held any elections since 2019 due to war rights in the wartime, prohibiting elections. Ukrainian officials also say that holding an election during the war in practice would be impossible, as many citizens live under Russian occupation. Mr. Last month, Trump joined Mr. Zelensky knocked out as a ‘dictator’, which annoyed the allies of Washington.
Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, says sources that his administration has studied ways, it can facilitate sanctions if Moscow agrees to end the war. Mr. However, Trump also raised the outlook to set up large -scale bank countries and tariffs on Russia until the peace is reached.
