A series of separate meetings between American, Russian and Ukrainian interlocutors entered their third day on Tuesday as U.S. negotiators shuttled back to discussions with their Ukrainian counterparts in the Saudi capital, a continuation of talks with Kyiv officials that began Sunday over a potential ceasefire in Ukraine. Meanwhile, a Kremlin official said Tuesday that the talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made. The three days of meetings — which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations — are part of an attempt to hammer out details on a partial pause in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week — with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles. Russia and Ukraine have also taken differing interpretations of what a possible partial ceasefire would look like, and disagreed over what kinds of targets would be included in a pause on strikes — even after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with the leaders of both countries to advance a deal. Yet despite the numerous sticking points — the White House has said a partial ceasefire would include ending attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure” — attempts to secure safe commercial shipping in the Black Sea appeared to garner support in principle from both parties, though no specific agreements have been announced. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday told the country’s state-run Channel One TV station that the Russian and U.S. delegations in Riyadh had discussed “primarily issues of safe shipping in the Black Sea” — a major shipping corridor on which both Russia and Ukraine have ports and coastline. Lavrov also said that Moscow is up for resuming — “in some form, acceptable to everyone” — a 2022 deal that allowed Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger was a growing threat and high food prices had pushed more people into poverty. The landmark Black Sea Grain initiative was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey in the summer of 2022; Moscow halted it in July 2023 until its demands to get Russian food and fertilizer to the world were met. Serhii Leshchenko, advisor to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that U.S-Ukrainian talks in Riyadh on Sunday had included “the security of shipping and infrastructure, including safety for the (Ukrainian) ports of Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson.” Leshchenko added that the Ukrainian delegation would brief Zelenskyy following renewed talks on Tuesday with the U.S. delegation, adding: “Ukraine is ready to support initiatives that will make diplomacy a means of pressure to compel Russia to end the war.” Future U.S.-Russia contacts expected, but no concrete plans On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the the outcome of the U.S-Russia talks in Riyadh “has been reported in the capitals” and was currently being “analyzed” by Moscow and Washington, but that the Kremlin has no plans to release further details of what was discussed to the public. “We’re talking about […]