The United States said on Tuesday it has reached separate agreements with Ukraine and Russia to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks by the two countries on each other’s energy facilities.

The agreements, if implemented, would represent the clearest progress yet towards a wider ceasefire that Washington sees as a stepping stone towards peace talks to bring an end to Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.

Russia, however, said it could not trust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and it could therefore only sign a Black Sea deal if Washington issued an “order” to him to respect it.

“We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of agreements with just Kyiv, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from Washington to Zelensky and his team to do one thing and not the other,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised comments.

It was not immediately clear whether Moscow’s demand risked derailing the deal. Zelensky has previously said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent his army into Ukraine in February 2022, is not to be trusted over peace moves.

Zelensky said a truce covering the Black Sea and energy infrastructure was effective immediately and that he would seek more weapons and sanctions on Russia from Donald Trump if Moscow broke the deals.

“If the Russians violate this, then I have a direct question for President Trump. If they violate, here is the evidence — we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons, etc,” Zelenskiy told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said Kyiv had agreed to both a maritime ceasefire and a pause by Russia and Ukraine in attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.

But he said Kyiv would regard any movement of Russian military vessels outside the eastern part of the Black Sea as a violation and a threat.

In this case Ukraine would have the full right to exercise self-defence, he said.

Seeking to fulfil a pledge by President Donald Trump to end the war quickly, the US originally proposed a full 30-day ceasefire — to which Ukraine agreed in principle on March 11 — as a step towards peace talks.

But the Americans held separate talks in Saudi Arabia with Russia and Ukraine this week to discuss more limited ceasefires on energy and at sea after Putin responded to the wider truce plan with a long list of conditions and questions.

Trump is pressing both sides to bring a swift end to the war, something he promised to achieve when he ran for president last year.

At the same time, he is pursuing a rapid rapprochement with Moscow that both sides say could lead to lucrative business opportunities and cooperation across a wide range of areas, from minerals to sport and space exploration.

Ukraine and its European allies fear Trump could strike a hasty deal with Putin that undermines their security and caves in to Russian demands, including for Kyiv to abandon its Nato ambitions and give up the entirety of four regions claimed by Russia as its own. Ukraine has rejected that as tantamount to surrender.

Successor to Black Sea deal

The maritime ceasefire is a successor to the earlier Black Sea deal that had allowed Ukraine to safely export nearly 33 million metric tonnes of grain despite the war.

Moscow withdrew in 2023, saying its own food and fertiliser exports faced serious issues because of Western sanctions affecting payments, logistics and insurance. Kyiv had earlier accused Russia of obstructing the initiative.

Lavrov said the market for grain and fertiliser needed to be “predictable”. He said Russia could not take Zelensky at his word, a charge Zelensky often levels at Putin.

The Black Sea initiative was the priority of discussions at a meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Monday, Lavrov added.

The Kremlin said earlier today that both Russia and the US were analysing the outcome of the talks, but the details would not be made public.

Ukraine’s national broadcaster Suspilne cited a source as saying Ukrainian and US officials would meet in the Saudi capital Riyadh today.

When Trump and Putin spoke last week, the Russian leader declined a proposal by the US president for a full 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine but agreed to a moratorium on attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Ukraine says it is ready to join a limited energy ceasefire if it is properly documented.