US holds separate talks with Russians after meeting Ukrainians to discuss potential ceasefire
Dubai: US negotiators worked on a proposed partial ceasefire in the three-year-old war in Ukraine on Monday, meeting representatives from Russia one day after holding separate talks with a team from Kyiv. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire -- which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week -- with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles. One major sticking point is what targets would be off-limits to strike, even after US President Donald Trump spoke with the countries' leaders, because the parties disagree. While the White House said "energy and infrastructure" would be covered, the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to "energy infrastructure".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would also like to see infrastructure like railways and ports protected. Talks on Monday in the Saudi capital of Riyadh were expected to address some of those differences, as well as a potential pause in attacks in the Black Sea to ensure the safety of commercial shipping. Russian state media reported late Monday local time that the talks had ended. In an exchange with reporters at the White House, Trump said territorial lines and the potential for US ownership of a key nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine have been part of the talks. Last week, Trump floated the idea of the US taking control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The six-reactor facility -- one of the world's largest -- was seized by Russia early in the war. "Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant -- work it that way because we have the expertise" to get the plant operating, Trump said. "Something like that would be fine with me." Since falling under Russian control, the plant's conditions have deteriorated. While its reactors have been shut down for years, they still require power and staff to maintain cooling systems and safety features. The facility is connected to Ukraine's energy grid without producing electricity.
US and Russian representatives met in the morning in Riyadh, Russia's state Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies reported. The US and Ukrainian teams met Sunday. Serhii Leshchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian presidency, said the delegation remained in Riyadh on Monday and is expected to meet again with the Americans. In his nightly address on Monday, Zelenskyy said representatives from Ukraine and the US will meet again, although he did not specify when. Grigory Karasin, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian Parliament's Upper House and a participant in Monday's talks, told the Interfax news agency the negotiations were going on in a “creative way" and that the US and Russian delegations "understand each other's views". Meanwhile, both Russia and Ukraine continued to launch attacks across their borders. The Russian defence ministry said on Monday a Ukrainian drone attacked an oil pumping station in southern Russia that serves a pipeline carrying Kazakhstan's Caspian Sea oil to the Russian port of Novorossiisk for export. It said the drone was downed before it could reach the pumping station. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday the Russian military has been fulfilling President Vladimir Putin's order to halt attacks on energy facilities for 30 days. He has accused Ukraine of derailing the partial ceasefire with attacks on Russia's energy facilities, including a gas metering station in Sudzha in Russia's Kursk region. Ukraine's military General Staff rejected Moscow's accusations and blamed the Russian military for shelling the station, a claim Peskov called "absurd". Zelenskyy said on Sunday evening that "since March 11, a proposal for an unconditional ceasefire has been on the table, and these attacks could have already stopped. But it is Russia that continues all this".
He added that Ukraine's partners -- "the US, Europe, and others around the world" -- should increase pressure on Russia “to stop this terror.” Zelenskyy has emphasised that Ukraine is open to Trump's proposal of a full, 30-day ceasefire. Putin has made a complete ceasefire conditional on a halt of arms supplies to Kyiv and a suspension of Ukraine's military mobilisation -- demands rejected by Kyiv and its Western allies. Speaking on "Fox News Sunday", Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said he expected "some real progress" at talks and that a pause in hostilities by both countries in the Black Sea would "naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire".
