White House officials are into the third day an intense round of Ukraine ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia – as Donald Trump is said to be pushing for a truce deal by Easter.
In the grand rooms of Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, Washington’s team met with Ukrainian officials on Sunday, Russian officials on Monday, before reentering talks with Kyiv’s team for a time on Tuesday.
"We're talking about territory right now. We're talking about lines of demarcation, talking about power, power plant ownership. Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant...because we have the expertise," Mr Trump said during a press briefing on Monday. He appears to be referring to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a topic which Volodymyr Zelensky said had come up in a recent phone call between the two presidents.
On Tuesday, The Kremlin said Moscow and the United States are analysing the outcome of talks between their officials in Saudi Arabia on Monday – declining to give details of the discussions which both sides had said would focus on a potential naval ceasefire.
After three years of brutal warfare, US officials have said that Mr Trump hopes to secure a ceasefire deal by 20 April, a symbolic date on which both Western and Orthodox celebrations of Easter will overlap this year.
But Moscow has repeatedly tempered hopes of a swift truce, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warning that progress on a deal was unlikely as it was “only the beginning” of what would be “difficult” negotiations. Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said negotiations “should not be expected to produce a breakthrough.”
Washington, meanwhile, has flattered Putin, with special envoy Steve Witkoff praising him as “super smart” and “not a bad guy”.
A 30-day pause on energy facility attacks
Broadly, the talks will focus on the details of a proposed 30-day ceasefire on strikes on energy infrastructure as well as strikes in the Black Sea – and beyond that, a longer-term peace deal.
Following a phone call last week, Putin and Mr Trump agreed “that the movement to peace will begin” with a 30-day pause in attacks on Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities, the White House said.
But that narrowly defined ceasefire was quickly undermined by strikes from Moscow on Ukraine’s energy grid within hours of the call. Kyiv also hit targets inside Russia and accused Moscow of bombing its own gas pumping station in the border Kursk to undermine the agreement.
Nevertheless, Mr Zelensky has said that Kyiv would draw up a list of facilities which could be subject to a partial ceasefire, including not just energy, but also rail and port infrastructure.
A moratorium on energy facilities could disproportionately favour Moscow, given Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities have been a key route for Kyiv to inflict pain on its aggressor.
A Black Sea shipping deal
Mr Peskov, meanwhile, said Moscow’s main focus on Monday would be on a possible resumption of the UN-brokered July 2022 deal to ensure safe navigation for commercial vessels in the Black Sea.
Despite Russia having unilaterally withdrawn later that same year, the Kremlin claimed that Putin had “responded constructively” to a Trump initiative on Black Sea shipping and had agreed to begin negotiations.
In remarks that will do little to assuage European fears that the White House is increasingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, US special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday: “I feel that [Putin] wants peace.
“I think that you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that, you'll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire.”
Russian control over Ukrainian territory
On Friday, Mr Witkoff said he believed “the central issue” in the conflict and the “elephant in the room” in peace talks is whether Mr Zelensky can acknowledge Moscow’s claimed right to four “Russian-speaking” Ukrainian regions sought by Putin – two of which he was unable to name – in remarks likely to have delighted the Kremlin.
While Russia controls much of Donetsk and Luhansk, where fighting has been raging since 2014, Ukraine retains much of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, despite Putin’s attempt to illegally annex all four regions following a referendum in September 2022 decried as a sham by the international community.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper cited sources who attended a private business event with Putin last week as saying he wants the US to formally recognise the four regions – where Ukrainians continue to give their lives to prevent Russian gains – along with Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
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 – but that Kyiv will never recognise Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territory.
Asked on Sunday whether the US would accept a peace deal in which Russia was allowed to keep Ukrainian territory, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said: “We have to ask ourselves, is it in our national interest? Is it realistic? ... Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil?”
Nato membership and security guarantees
While Ukraine has previously suggested territory could be temporarily ceded in exchange for Nato security guarantees, Mr Trump has said he does not believe Russia would “allow” Ukraine to join Nato.
With Moscow also insisting that one condition of a peace deal should be a reduction in Ukraine’s military, a move Ukraine is almost certainly unlikely to accept, Britain and France are seeking to assemble a Western “coalition of the willing” to offer military security guarantees to Kyiv under any peace deal.
Mr Witkoff, however, dismissed this proposition on Sunday as “a posture and a pose” which he claimed was based on a “simplistic” notion of the European leaders thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.
And he downplayed European fears of the risk that Putin will use any ceasefire to rearm and launch further attacks on Ukraine and its neighbours, saying: “I just don't see that he wants to take all of Europe. This is a much different situation than it was in World War Two.”
US ownership of Ukraine’s minerals and energy facilities
Instead, the Trump administration has claimed that Washington having a stake in Ukraine’s minerals and energy resources could deter Russia from launching future attacks.
While efforts to seal a deal granting the US a vast stake in Ukraine’s rare earth mineral deposits stumbled after the disastrous White House meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky last month, the US president claimed on Friday that a deal would be signed very shortly.
Ukraine’s gas infrastructure could also be of interest to the White House, with Kyiv owning the world’s third-largest underground gas storage capacity. It could eventually import liquefied natural gas from the US, store it, then ship it westwards to European countries which are seeking alternatives to Russian gas.
In a recent call with Mr Zelensky, Mr Trump also suggested that the US could help to run – and possibly own – Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants.
Mr Zelensky said Kyiv would be ready to discuss US involvement in modernising the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant – which is Europe’s largest – if it were returned to Ukraine. But he warned it would take two and a half years to get the plant back online.
Prisoner exchanges
Russia and Ukraine exchanged 175 prisoners of war each, both sides said last Wednesday – with Russia handing over an additional 22 heavily wounded Ukrainian prisoners, in what the Russian defence ministry called a goodwill gesture.
Mr Zelensky 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”.
Western sanctions and 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, which prohibits holding elections. Ukrainian officials also say that holding an election during the war would be impossible in practice, given many citizens live under Russian occupation. Mr Trump last month lashed out at Mr Zelensky as a “dictator”, enraging Washington’s allies.
Since Mr Trump returned to the White House in January, sources say his administration has been studying ways it could ease sanctions if Moscow agrees to end the war. However, this month Mr Trump also raised the prospect of imposing large-scale banking curbs and tariffs on Russia until peace is achieved.
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