(ANSA-AFP) - RIYADH, MAR 24 - US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a partial ceasefire in Ukraine on Monday as dozens of people were wounded in a missile strike on a Ukrainian city.
With Ukrainian negotiators waiting nearby, a day
after they sat down with the US team, the Americans and Russians
met in Riyadh with a Black Sea ceasefire top of the agenda.
President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the
three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks will pave the
way for a breakthrough.
While the talks took place at a luxury
hotel in the Saudi capital, 65 people were wounded in a missile
attack on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, officials said. The
attack on a "densely populated residential area" damaged
apartments and an educational facility, the regional
prosecutor's office said. The city's acting mayor earlier said a
hospital had been affected. The Ukrainian negotiating team was
expecting a second meeting with the US delegation on Monday, a
source in Kyiv told AFP, a sign that progress may have been
made.
This month in Jeddah -- days after President Volodymyr
Zelensky's White House dressing-down by Trump -- Ukraine agreed
to a US-proposed, 30-day ceasefire that was then rejected by
Russian President Vladimir Putin. Officials are now studying a
possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, a year-long
agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other
food exports to be shipped from Ukraine's ports. "The issue of
the Black Sea Initiative and all aspects related to the renewal
of this initiative is on the agenda today," Kremlin spokesperson
Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing. "This was President
Trump's proposal and President Putin agreed to it. It was with
this mandate that our delegation travelled to Riyadh." The
US-Ukraine and US-Russia talks were originally planned to take
place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy, with the
United States going back and forth between the delegations. The
US team is led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White
House National Security Council, and senior State Department
official Michael Anton, a source familiar with the matter told
AFP. Ukraine's Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads the
Ukrainian team, said Sunday's talks with the United States were
"productive and focused". (ANSA-AFP).
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