Washington (TDI): The United States said on Tuesday it has reached separate deals with Ukraine and Russia to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks by the two nations on each other’s energy facilities.
The deals, if implemented, would represent the clearest progress yet toward a wider ceasefire the US sees a stepping stone toward peace negotiation to bring an end to Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.
Moscow, however, said it could not trust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and it could therefore only ink a Black Sea agreement if the US issued an “order” to him to respect it, Reuters reported.
“We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of deals with just Ukraine, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from the US to Zelensky and his team to do one thing and not the other,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised remarks.
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It was not immediately clear whether Russia’s demand risked derailing the agreement.
Zelensky has previously said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent forces into Ukraine in February 2022, is not to be trusted over peace moves.
Ukraine’s defense minister said Ukraine had agreed to both a maritime ceasefire and a pause by Moscow and Kyiv in attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.
Seeking to fulfil a pledge by President Donald Trump to end the war swiftly, Washington originally proposed a full 30-day ceasefire — to which Kyiv agreed in principle on March 11 — as a step toward peace negotiations.
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But the Americans held separate discussions in Saudi Arabia with Russia and Ukraine this week to talk on more limited ceasefires on energy and at sea, after Putin responded to the wider truce plan with a long list of conditions and questions.
