Ceasefire deal in Black Sea will be a victory for Putin
A US-brokered deal, the first in three years, offers limited gains for Ukraine and fails to extract any concessions from Russia, which continues its assault.
The first ceasefire deal since Russia sent tanks into Ukraine three years ago, brokered by the US during talks in Saudi Arabia, will have limited impact on the grinding war and seems to reward Moscow without extracting any notable concessions to Kyiv.
It also appears that Russia will gain far more than Ukraine from the announcement of a maritime ceasefire and a possible ban on strikes on energy facilities.
The White House said the agreement would “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea and provide security for shipping. But in reality the Black Sea has not seen significant battles since 2023, when Russia’s navy was forced to retreat from Crimea after a series of devastating Ukrainian strikes, including the sinking of the flagship Moskva early in the war.
Following the withdrawal of the Kremlin’s Black Sea Fleet, Ukraine had already been able to resume grain exports, so if anything the truce at sea looks set to benefit Russian ships.
“Ukraine has been quite successful in ensuring the security of its [Black Sea] grain corridor. At the same time, Russia constantly attacks the ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv and there is nothing about this in the agreement. No restrictions [on strikes] are imposed on Russia,” Serhii Leshchenko, a Ukrainian presidential advisor, wrote on Telegram.
He also accused the White House of failing to extract “any concessions” from Russia in exchange for helping Moscow to resume agricultural and fertiliser exports.
The second part of the deal, a potential end to attacks on energy infrastructure, would seem to at least spare Ukrainians the blackouts which Russia has tried to inflict repeatedly.
While Ukraine’s power grid has suffered years of Kremlin strikes, its military has also carried out spectacular attacks on Russian oil facilities, hurting Moscow’s ability to finance its war machine. The cessation of such attacks will prove a boost to the Kremlin as it looks to press home its advantage on the battlefield.
In return for the Black Sea ceasefire, Moscow has demanded sanctions relief for Rosselkhozbank, Russia’s main bank for agricultural transactions, as well as other financial institutions involved in the trade of food and fertilisers. It also said they should be reconnected to Swift, the global payments system.
Rosselkhozbank, also known as the Russian Agricultural Bank, was cut off from Swift by the European Union in 2022. However, the EU was later reported to have proposed a plan to allow the bank to create a subsidiary to handle payments related to grain exports through Swift.
A version of the deal was formally proposed to Russia in 2023 by the United Nations but was met with scepticism in Moscow and was never implemented. If Russia wins such concessions now it will be seen as a major victory for President Putin, and could set a precedent for the subsequent lifting of further sanctions.
The White House said that it would “enhance” Russia’s access to international payment systems but did not mention Swift by name.
Understandably, Ukraine is worried about a weakening of the West’s resolve towards Russia.
“Even today, on the very day of negotiations, we see how the Russians have already begun to manipulate,” President Zelensky said. “They are already trying to distort agreements and, in fact, deceive both our intermediaries and the entire world.”
There is also little sense in Moscow that Putin is preparing for peace.
The Russian foreign ministry said on Monday that it was unrealistic to expect a “breakthrough,” while Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said it was “deluded” to imagine that the guns would soon fall silent in Ukraine. The Kremlin also said that no date had been set for a new round of US-Russia talks.
With Russian forces advancing slowly in eastern Ukraine and the Trump administration echoing the Kremlin’s views on the war, there are few incentives for Putin to call a halt to Moscow’s invasion.
Despite massive losses among its armed forces, Russia’s rhetoric has barely changed from the early weeks of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Lavrov said this week that Russia was determined to “denazify” Ukraine, a reference to Putin’s false portrayal of Kyiv as a “neo-Nazi” state. He also accused western countries of trying to “contain” Russia like “Napoleon and Hitler.”
A Russian rocket attack injured 88 people, including 17 children, in Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine even as Monday’s talks in Saudi Arabia got under way.
“Time is currently on our side, and we’ll try to make the most of it,” an unnamed Russian diplomat told The Moscow Times, an independent website that has been banned by the Kremlin. Another official said Moscow had ordered its negotiators at the Saudi talks to “nitpick every comma”.
The Times
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