US and Russian statements laying out a framework for limiting military actions in the Black Sea were widely welcomed as a step to wider cease-fire in the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine: Both Moscow and Washington would “continue working toward a durable and lasting peace,” the Kremlin and the White House said.
But the Kremlin statement also had specific language absent from the White House’s.
Moscow would only abide by the agreement, the Kremlin said, after the West lifted sanctions on Russian banks that have been involved trading agriculture products, as well as on Russian ships. Rosselkhozbank, a major state-owned lender for Russian agrobusiness, was mentioned specifically, including connecting it and other Russian entities to the global SWIFT system of bank transfers.
So was lifting restrictions on fertilizer exports and insurance companies covering them.
That’s all potentially a major stumbling block, experts say: Rejoining the SWIFT system, for example, would require European consent -- at a time when US-European relations are spiraling downward.
Is it a “poison pill” aimed at torpedoing the entire deal? Is it Russia pushing maximalist negotiating positions, similar to what it’s done since before the start of the all-out invasion of Ukraine? Or is the Kremlin language merely more explicit in its wording?
“The Russian demands are completely unproportional to what Russia is offering,” Janis Kluge, deputy chief of Eastern Europe and Eurasia division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, told RFE/RL.
“Moscow wants to test [the Trump administration] here. It wants to see how desperate he really is to get even a partial cease-fire done,” Kluge said. “But it is also important who will get blamed by Trump when there is no deal. Russia's conditions are meant to turn Trump's anger away from Moscow and toward Europe.”
'Root Causes'
Trump has made ending Russia’s three-year assault on Ukraine one of his top foreign policy priorities. In contrast to his predecessor, Joe Biden, who refused to engage with Moscow, Trump’s administration has done just that, holding at least two phone calls with President Vladimir Putin and dispatching top advisers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to Saudi Arabia to open negotiations.
Talks have focused not only on resolving the war, but more broadly restoring US-Russian relations, which have nosedived since at least 2012, under then-President Barack Obama, and then plummeted after the February 2022 invasion. Putin has referred to the broader issues as the “root causes” of the standoff over Ukraine.
The agreement reached this week -- which included a parallel set of US talks with Ukrainian officials -- involved “technical experts” tasked with focusing on just one area: the Black Sea Initiative.
That’s a deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations aimed at getting Ukrainian and Russian grain exports out of the Black Sea and into world markets, heading off fears of price inflation and famine.
It expired in July 2023 after Russia refused to renew its participation.
The sweeping Western sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for the invasion included cutting off Russian banks from SWIFT, a messaging system that helps banks conduct transfers and payments.
The sanctions did not, however, target Russian exports of food and fertilizer; Moscow remains a major supplier to global markets for agriculture-related goods. However, Russian officials have repeatedly complained that sanctions on things like insurance or shipping and logistics have hindered that trade.
The demands laid out in the Kremlin’s March 25 statement, Kluge said, are similar to what Russia wanted during the 2023 negotiations.
“Back then, Ukraine was in a desperate situation, a solution for grain exports was needed,” he said. “The EU was worried about too much grain coming to Europe, triggering protests by farmers. So the EU was willing to compromise, and ‘re-SWIFTING’ Rosselkhozbank was seen as an option to get it done.”
“We’ve seen this before. They’re basically copying and pasting their own language from the summer of 2023,” said Iulia-Sabina Joja, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., and former Romanian presidential adviser. “They weren’t as daring as now, with the SWIFT language, and particularly with fertilizer exports, which they’re making a lot of money off of.”
'A Negotiating Tactic’
A week before the Black Sea agreement was announced, the Kremlin and the White House sketched out the framework for a limited cease-fire that aimed to restrict targeting energy infrastructure -- things like power plants, transmission lines, and substations.
Still, Ukrainian and Russian forces have continued to pound one another with drones and missiles, including overnight on March 26.
Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service that Russia had targeted Ukrainian energy facilities at least eight times since March 18.
In comments to reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Putin's order for a moratorium on targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure remained in place.
He also said, however, that the Black Sea initiative would be "activated after a number of conditions are met."
The White House’s March 25 statement broadly signaled that Washington would help restore Russia’s access to the market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, along with lowering maritime insurance costs and improving access to ports
In comments to reporters, Trump later signaled that his administration was looking at lifting additional sanctions.
“It’s a negotiating tactic, but it’s not something surprising or unusual,” Joja said of Russia’s position. “They don’t want a cease-fire, or to stop the war. They keep finding excuses not to, keep putting in conditions which are in pursuit of their national interest.”
Russia has made clear its ultimate goal is to have the Western sanctions lifted. But those sanctions remain a bargaining chip for the Trump administration, so it’s unlikely the White House would seek to lift them all at once, Ukrainian economist Borys Kushniruk said.
“It's not advantageous for Trump to lift all the sanctions against Russia. This is an instrument of influence, so why get rid of it?" Kushniruk told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
Mark Galeotti, a longtime expert on Russia’s security services, argued that Russian officials were setting a trap for the Europeans.
“Many of the concessions Moscow demands are not simply in Washington’s gift,” he said in an op-ed for The Spectator magazine. “Does Europe meekly go along with the American plan, heightening frustrations that it is not also at the negotiating table, or does it resist, again running the risk of further alienating an already Europhobic administration?”
