Riyadh Talks on Ukraine and Other Headlines of the Day

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Top of the Agenda

Russia played down hopes of quick progress on a Ukraine truce following talks yesterday with a U.S. delegation in Saudi Arabia. The daylong session with U.S. negotiators followed a Sunday meeting in Riyadh between the United States and Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in separate conversations with U.S. President Donald Trump in recent days that they agreed to a cease-fire on energy facilities, though Putin immediately listed further conditions for a full truce. 

The latest from Riyadh. Talks focused on the technical aspects of a potential partial truce.

• A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the proposal on the table included a cease-fire in the Black Sea. 
• Kyiv has provided Washington with a list of proposed sites to be protected in a limited cease-fire.
• The Kremlin said talks weighed returning to a 2022 deal that allowed Ukraine to export its grain through the Black Sea. Russia exited the deal in 2023.

A Kremlin spokesperson said that “a great many different aspects [of a cease-fire] are still to be worked through,” while Trump told reporters, “We’re talking about territory right now. We’re talking about lines of demarcation, talking about… power plant ownership.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister said: “Instead of making hollow statements about peace, Russia must stop bombing our cities and end its war on civilians.” 

On the battlefield. Conventional and apparent unconventional attacks continued from both sides yesterday. 

• Russian missile fire hit a densely populated area of the Ukrainian city of Sumy, wounding eighty-eight people, according to local officials.
• Unnamed Ukrainian officials said that an unusual and systemic outage of the online ticketing system at Ukraine’s state rail service was a Russian cyberattack. Moscow did not comment.
• A Ukrainian artillery attack on the Russia-controlled Ukrainian region of Luhansk killed six people including two journalists and their driver, Russian officials said. Ukrainian officials did not comment.

“The Trump administration has done itself no favors by openly distancing itself from Ukraine, an action that removes Putin’s incentive to agree to a cease-fire. Or by agreeing to bilateral talks with Russia without insisting on a parallel Russia-Ukraine channel. Or by introducing and publicly discussing considerations favorable to Russia into immediate cease-fire talks that ought to be left for a second, final-status phase… The best chance for the peace that President Trump seeks is to keep it simple: a cease-fire in place backed by continued U.S. military and intelligence support for Ukraine, support that would incentivize Putin to sign and honor a cease-fire,” CFR President Emeritus Richard Haass writes on Substack.

Across the Globe

Unclassified chat on U.S. Houthi strikes. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz reportedly added The Atlantic’s top editor to a Signal group that discussed confidential plans for the March 15 U.S. strikes on Yemen. A National Security Council spokesperson said the message thread “appears to be authentic,” while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters that “nobody was texting war plans.” The chat reportedly occurred outside the secure government channels that are normally used for classified military planning. On the reported chat thread, a user identified as U.S. Vice President JD Vance expressed reluctance about the strikes on grounds the United States would be “bailing Europe out again.” A user identified as Hegseth wrote, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading.” The directors of national intelligence and the CIA are due to testify to Congress today, where the incident is expected to be raised. 

Trump’s tariff signals. The United States will impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from countries that purchase Venezuelan oil, Trump wrote yesterday on social media. He said that measure was due to factors including Venezuelan migration to the United States. An executive order said the tariffs may be imposed on or after April 2. The top buyer of Venezuelan oil last year was China. Also yesterday, the Treasury Department extended Chevron’s deadline to wind down operations in Venezuela. Speaking to journalists at the White House, Trump said that he may give “a lot of countries” breaks on reciprocal tariffs planned for April 2, without providing details.

New truce proposal for Gaza. Hamas and the United States responded positively to a new Egyptian truce plan that would see Hamas release five Israeli hostages each week and Israel implement the second phase of the cease-fire after the first week, two unnamed security sources told Reuters. An unnamed Israeli official told the Times of Israelyesterday that “we haven’t heard of any new proposal.” The United Nations said yesterday it would reduce its personnel in Gaza after five aid workers were killed in the renewed fighting.

U.S. lifts bounties on Taliban officials. The U.S. government removed bounties on three senior Taliban officials following last week’s visit to Afghanistan by a senior Trump advisor, the Taliban interior ministry said. During that visit, the Taliban freed a U.S. detainee. The senior officials include acting Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and are part of the Haqqani network, which was behind multiple large-scale attacks during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, Haqqani has criticized some of the group’s more hardline stances.

Indonesia’s climate transition deal. The country will maintain a plan to transition away from coal and toward cleaner energy despite the United States’ exit as a donor country, a senior official said yesterday. Washington had committed more than $2 billion in grants, loans, and loan guarantees for the plan, which has a total price tag of $20 billion. Nine other countries remain committed, including funding co-leads Japan and Germany, the official said.

UK sanctions over Sri Lanka’s war. The United Kingdom (UK) yesterday sanctioned three former Sri Lankan military commanders and one rebel Tamil Tigers commander, citing human rights abuses during the country’s civil war that included extrajudicial killings, torture, and sexual violence. The war ran from 1983 to 2009. In 2011, a UN panel found “credible allegations” of serious violations by both parties; Colombo has generally denied those accusations and declined to cooperate with investigators.

Heathrow fire probe focuses on transformer. UK officials have said that a fault in a transformer at a power station likely sparked the fire that shut down Heathrow Airport last Friday. The event has drawn attention to the limited global supply of transformers that underpin electric grids. Prices and delivery times for transformers were growing even before current global trade tensions, Bloomberg reported, becoming a bottleneck in the global energy transition. They’re also in increasing demand due to the power needs of technologies such as artificial intelligence. More than 80 percent of large power transformers in the United States are imported, mostly from Canada and Mexico.

Political truce in Mozambique. Opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane said he and President Daniel Chapo reached an agreement to end months of post-election violence. Mondlane said he was the rightful winner of October’s election, and hundreds of people have died in demonstrations since then. Chapo met other party leaders earlier this month and agreed to de-escalate tensions, but Mondlane was not included in those discussions.

The Day Ahead

• Germany’s Bundestag holds its first session following federal elections.

• A World Health Organization conference on air pollution begins in Colombia.

• Portugal’s foreign minister visits China.