U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Monday to discuss a potential broad cease-fire in Ukraine, with Washington prioritizing a separate Black Sea maritime truce as a precursor to a wider agreement.
The talks, which followed U.S. negotiations with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, come as U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his drive to end the three-year-old conflict after he last week spoke to both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The White House says the aim of the talks is to reach a maritime cease-fire in the Black Sea, allowing the free flow of shipping, though the area has not been the location of intense military operations in recent months.
"This is primarily about the safety of navigation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that an earlier agreement on Black Sea shipping brokered in 2022 had failed to deliver what it had promised Moscow.
A source briefed on the planning for the talks said the U.S. side was being led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council and Michael Anton, a senior State Department official.
Russia was represented by Grigory Karasin, a former diplomat who is now chair of the Russian upper house of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and by Sergei Beseda, an adviser to the director of the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB.
Karasin was cited by Interfax news agency as saying during a break after nearly three hours of talks that consultations were progressing "creatively" and that the two sides had discussed issues regarded as "irritants" in their bilateral ties.
Trump, who has repeatedly called for an end to the war in Ukraine, has expressed broad satisfaction over the way talks have been going and has been complimentary about Putin's engagement in the process so far.
He said on Saturday that efforts to stop further escalation in the conflict were "somewhat under control."
However, there is skepticism among major European powers over whether Putin is ready to make meaningful concessions or will stick to what they see as his maximalist demands that do not appear to have changed since he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022.
Putin says he is ready to discuss peace but that Ukraine must officially drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
The Kremlin said Monday that Russia was still abiding by a 30-day moratorium on attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure targets that Putin last week promised Trump, despite Kyiv continuing to strike Russian energy facilities.
Ukraine, which said it would only agree to the pause if a formal document was signed, has accused Moscow of flouting its own moratorium, which Russia denies.
White House national security adviser Mike Waltz told CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that the U.S., Russian and Ukrainian delegations were assembled in the same facility in Riyadh.
Beyond a Black Sea cease-fire, he said, the teams will discuss "the line of control" between the two countries, which he described as "verification measures, peacekeeping, freezing the lines where they are."
He said "confidence-building measures" are being discussed, including the return of Ukrainian children taken by Russia.
The Kremlin said the talks would focus on the idea of reviving the Black Sea initiative.
Türkiye and the United Nations helped mediate the original so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal struck in July 2022 that allowed the safe export of nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea despite the war.
Russia withdrew from the agreement in 2023, complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced serious obstacles, though Russia is not currently facing serious problems getting its grain to market by the Black Sea.
Ukraine's defense minister, Rustem Umerov, the head of the Ukrainian delegation, said on Facebook that the U.S.-Ukraine talks included proposals to protect energy facilities and critical infrastructure.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin in Moscow earlier in March, played down concerns among Washington's NATO allies that Moscow could be emboldened by a deal and invade other neighbors.
"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, Witkoff told Fox News.
"I feel that he wants peace," Witkoff said of Putin.
The Kremlin's Peskov said Moscow and Washington had a common understanding on the need to move towards a settlement to end the war, but said there were still many different aspects to be worked out.
