Ukraine updates: Moscow, Kyiv agree to Black Sea ceasefire

The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania met jointly with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Tuesday to express concerns over the United States' policy on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"The Baltic states are quite skeptical about Russia's intentions," Latvia's Baiba Braze told a joint press conference. "Our intel assessments clearly show that Russia and their instruments of power are all aligned toward war, not toward peace."

Estonia's Margus Tsahkna struck a similar chord, telling the French AFP news agency: "The only person who can actually finish this war is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and we just don't see in the last couple of weeks that he has actually put anything on the table."

Rather, Tsahkna continued, Putin is maintaining his "full-scale war on the battlefield" while diplomacy is ongoing. "We need to understand that Russia is a brutal country, and the war is very brutal."

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all European Union and NATO members, and all share a history of occupation by the Soviet Union in the 20th century. The three are among the highest spenders on defense as a share of GDP and are firm supporters of Ukraine.

Tsahkna warned that Putin's main goal was not merely a ceasefire on his terms, but rather to decrease US influence in Europe, rendering European countries less able to resist Moscow's attempts to reassert its own influence over former Soviet territories.

"If you see what Putin was like just two months ago,  or even more than two months ago, he was in a weaker position," he said. "[But] Putin has now an upper hand in some ways."

Tsahkna then went on to say: "The question is: how long is Trump actually going to give Putin to play games?"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed the partial ceasefire agreement covering naval warfare in the Black Sea and a temporary halt to air strikes against energy infrastructure – but emphasized that the ball is in Moscow's court.

"How Russia behaves in the coming days will reveal a lot," he said in his daily evening address on social media. "If there are air raid alerts again, if there is renewed military activity in the Black Sea, if Russian manipulations and threats continue, then new measures will need to be taken, specifically against Moscow."

The Kremlin has demanded the lifting of some Western sanctions including reconnection to the international SWIFT banking system in return for its agreement.

Zelenskyy said "results are needed from Russia" but cautioned: "We do not trust them. And frankly, the world doesn't trust Russia. And they must prove that they are truly ready to end the war, ready to stop lying to the world, to [US President Donald Trump] and to America."

Earlier, at a press conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy told reporters that separate talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators with US officials were the "right steps … the first steps … toward a sustainable and fair peace agreement."

Russia confirmed its participation in the US-brokered deal to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia and the US have also agreed to develop measures to halt strikes on Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities for a period of 30 days that began on March 18.

But the Kremlin also said that the agreement halting strikes in the Black Sea could only come into force after  the "lifting of sanctions restrictions" on the Russian Agricultural Bank and other "financial institutions involved in international trade of food," and only after they are reconnected to the SWIFT international payment system.

The White House said Russia and Ukraine had agreed separately to avoid military strikes on vessels in the Black Sea.

The breakthrough comes as the US participated in lengthy talks that concluded Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.

Issuing parallel statements, the White House said that each country "agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea."

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov confirmed the news on X. 

"All parties have agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea," Umerov said. 

But Ukraine warned that movements of Russian warships "outside the eastern part" of the Black Sea would violate a US-brokered agreement.

Umerov said on Facebook that if Russian warships moved from the eastern part of the Black Sea then "Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defense."

Russia's top diplomat has urged Washington to give an "order" to Kyiv to restore an agreement on Black Sea navigation. 

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was keen to see a new agreement with fewer restrictions on its exports.

"We are... for restarting in some kind of form, in a more acceptable way for everyone, the Black Sea Initiative," Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

He said Russia does not want "anybody to try to push us out" of the grain and fertilizer markets. 

Moscow thinks this can only be achieved "as a result of an order from Washington to [Ukrainian leader Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and his team," Lavrov said.

Although Russian exports of food and fertilizer are not subject to Western sanctions, Russia says restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance have amounted to a barrier to shipments.

Representatives of Ukraine and the United States have finished a brief round of talks after hours of negotiations between Moscow and Washington officials on Monday.

"The talks are over. All details will be announced later," a Ukrainian source told media, not long after saying the meeting had begun.

The talks between Russia and the US yielded no announcement on any truce. 

In Moscow, the Kremlin on Tuesday said the "content" of its talks with the US a day earlier would not be made public and that it was still "analyzing" the results of negotiations with the US team.

Talks are expected to take place between Ukrainian and US delegates after US President Donald Trump's administration held talks with Russian representatives.

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he did expect his officials to meet the US negotiators again after they spoke on Sunday — before the talks with Moscow.

While Zelenskyy did not specify when this would happen, Ukraine's national broadcaster Suspilne cited a source in the Ukrainian delegation saying it would be on Tuesday.

A member of Ukraine's delegation told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that Ukrainian and US officials were holding a round of talks Tuesday in Riyadh. 

At a previous round of talks this month in Jeddah, Kyiv agreed to a US-proposed 30-day truce that Russian President Vladimir Putin subsequently rejected.

Officials are now studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, an agreement that allowed millions of metric tons of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine's ports.

Russian officials and media say a targeted Ukrainian artillery strike killed six people on Monday including two journalists and their driver who were on assignment in Moscow-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk region.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Alexander Fedorchak, a war correspondent from Russia's Izvestia media outlet, was killed in the attack as well as camera operator Andrei Panov and driver Alexander Sirkeli who worked for the Zvezda television channel.

Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-appointed governor of the Luhansk region, said that the shelling killed six people although he did not say who the other people reportedly killed were.

One of the lead negotiators from Russia negotiator on Tuesday said talks between Russian and US officials over a partial ceasefire in Ukraine had been helpful and that they would go on.

"We talked about everything, it was an intense dialogue, not easy, but very useful for us and the Americans," Grigory Karasin, told the state TASS news agency.

"We will continue it," he added and Moscow and Washington's teams held 12 hours of negotiations in a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia.

Karasin also said Russia would like other countries and the United Nations to participate in the talks.

He added that the "

"We will continue" the talks, he said, "adding in the international community, above all the United Nations and certain countries."

United States and Russian negotiators on Monday worked on a proposed partial ceasefire in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine, a day after holding separate talks with a team from Kyiv.

It has been a struggle to work out even a limited, 30-day ceasefire.

Although Moscow and Kyiv agreed to a truce in principle last week, both sides have continued to attack each other with drones and missiles.

After US President Donald Trump spoke with the countries' leaders, a key sticking point is what targets would be off-limits to strike.

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 wants other infrastructure like railways and ports to be protected.

While the talks took place at a luxury hotel in Riyadh, lasting 12 hours, nearly 90 people including 17 children were wounded in a Russian missile attack Monday on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine.

This blog will bring you the latest coverage, analysis and multimedia content related to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Amid talks on a limited ceasefire in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian negotiating team is staying in for another day to meet US representatives who spoke to Russia on Monday.