Key events
As we mentioned in an earlier post, US and Russian negotiators have sat down for talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on a partial ceasefire in Ukraine.
The meeting is expected to be followed by another round of talks between US and Ukrainian teams (after officials from Washington and Kyiv met yesterday).
The separate meetings are set to discuss details of a pause in long-range attacks against energy facilities and civilian infrastructure and a halt on attacks in the Black Sea to ensure safe commercial shipping.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine energy targets for 30 days, after a lengthy phone call with US President Donald Trump.
But there is ongoing confusion about what constitutes energy infrastructure, with Kyiv pushing for railways and ports to be protected under the definition, which the Kremlin has framed narrowly.
Any deal in Riyadh comes after developments last week when Vladimir Putin agreed to Donald Trump’s proposal for a 30-day halt on attacks to energy infrastructure. The ceasefire, however, was cast into doubt soon after, with both sides reporting continued strikes.
Talks aim for Black Sea deal
In the talks, Washington has been eyeing a Black Sea ceasefire deal, a major aim of Russia, before securing a wider agreement.
As Reuters reports, the negotiations, which followed US talks with Ukraine on Sunday, come as Donald Trump intensifies his drive to end the three-year-old conflict after he last week spoke to both Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin.
A source briefed on the planning for the talks told Reuters that the US 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.
The White House says the aim of the talks is to reach a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, allowing the free flow of shipping.
Russia will be represented by Grigory Karasin, a former diplomat who is now chair of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sergei Beseda, an adviser to the director of the Federal Security Service.
Talks begin, says Russian news agency
The Russian-US talks in Saudi Arabia have started, according to Tass, the Russian state news agency. You can read our curtain raiser on the negotiations, and the gap between expectations on the two sides, here:
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war – here’s a snapshot of the latest.
Talks between the US and Russia are to be held in Saudi Arabia on Monday as Washington signalled its hope for “real progress” on a ceasefire in the Ukraine war while Moscow warned that “difficult negotiations” were ahead.
The start of the latest round of negotiations comes a day after Ukrainian and US delegations held “constructive and meaningful” talks in the kingdom with a focus on protecting energy facilities and critical infrastructure, Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov said.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff expressed optimism about the chances of ending the war, telling Fox News on Sunday: “I think that you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that, you’ll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s delegation to Sunday’s talks was working in “a completely constructive manner” and “the conversation is quite useful”.
“But no matter what we say to our partners today, we need to get Putin to give a real order to stop the strikes,” the Ukrainian president said in a televised statement.
The Kremlin poured cold water on hopes for a rapid resolution of the war, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling Russian state TV on Sunday: “We are only at the beginning of this path.”
The US is pushing for a broad ceasefire by 20 April, Bloomberg has reported, while sources said the timeline might slip given the wide gap between Kyiv and Moscow’s positions.
In other news:
-
Witkoff dismissed Keir Starmer’s attempts to rally peacekeepers in Ukraine as “a posture and a pose”. He said the idea was based on a “simplistic” notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking: “We have all got to be like Winston Churchill.” Witkoff also played down concerns among Washington’s European Nato allies that Putin might be emboldened by any peace deal in Ukraine to invade other neighbours, saying: “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.”
-
White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said the US was talking through a range of confidence-building measures in the talks on the war, including on the future of Ukrainian children taken into Russia. Asked about the goals for the broader negotiations, Waltz said that after a Black Sea ceasefire was agreed, “we’ll talk the line of control, which is the actual front lines. And that gets into the details of verification mechanisms, peacekeeping, freezing the lines where they are. And then, of course, the broader and permanent peace.”
-
At least seven people were killed in a barrage of strikes from more than 140 drones across Ukraine on Sunday, according to local officials and emergency services. Explosions were heard in the early hours of the night across the capital, Kyiv, as the air raid continued for more than five hours. Russian drones and debris from downed drones, which were flying at lower altitudes to evade air defences, fell on residential buildings across Kyiv, with at least one child among those killed. The Russian barrage also struck the Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Odesa and Donetsk regions, according to officials.
-
The online systems of Ukraine’s state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia were subjected to a large-scale, targeted cyber-attack, it said. Restoration of the online systems was ongoing, the company said on Telegram, but train traffic had been stable and running without delays.
-
Ukraine’s air force said on Monday it shot down 57 drones out of 99 launched by Russia overnight. Another 36 imitator drones did not reach their targets, it said, while not specifying what happened to the remaining six drones.
-
Russian authorities said on Sunday their air defences destroyed 59 Ukrainian drones targeting the country’s south-western regions, adding that the strikes had killed one person in Rostov.
-
Russian troops reportedly seized the small village of Sribne in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, while Ukraine’s army said its troops had recaptured a small village called Nadia in the eastern Luhansk region.