US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia yesterday to discuss a partial ceasefire in Ukraine, a day after US-Ukraine talks there and as US President Donald Trump pushes to quickly end the war.
The US and Russian teams huddled behind closed doors at a luxurious hotel in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, with a possible revival of a 2022 Black Sea ceasefire on the table.
The Ukrainian team, which held talks with US officials in the same venue on Sunday, was expecting a second meeting with the US yesterday, a source in Kyiv said, a sign that progress might have been made.
Photo: Reuters
Trump is pressing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks in Riyadh could pave the way for a breakthrough.
Earlier this month in Jeddah — days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s White House dressing-down by Trump — Ukraine agreed to a US-proposed, 30-day ceasefire that was then rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Officials are now studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, a year-long agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine’s ports.
“The issue of the Black Sea Initiative and all aspects related to the renewal of this initiative is on the agenda today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “This was President Trump’s proposal and President Putin agreed to it. It was with this mandate that our delegation traveled to Riyadh.”
The US team is being led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and senior US Department of State official Michael Anton, a source familiar with the matter said.
Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian team, said the first round of talks that finished late on Sunday was “productive and focused.”
“We addressed key points including energy,” Umerov wrote on social media.
PEACE AT LAST? UN experts had warned of threats and attacks ahead of the voting, but after a turbulent period, Bangladesh has seemingly reacted to the result with calm The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) yesterday celebrated a landslide victory in the first elections held since a deadly 2024 uprising, with party leader Tarique Rahman to become prime minister. Bangladesh Election Commission figures showed that the BNP alliance had won 212 seats, compared with 77 for the Islamist-led Jamaat-e-Islami alliance. The US embassy congratulated Rahman and the BNP for a “historic victory,” while India praised Rahman’s “decisive win” in a significant step after recent rocky relations with Bangladesh. China and Pakistan, which grew closer to Bangladesh since the uprising and the souring of ties with India, where ousted Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina
FAST-TRACK: The deal is to be sent to the legislature, but time is of the essence, as Trump had raised tariffs on Seoul when it failed to quickly ratify a similar pact Taiwan and the US on Thursday signed a trade agreement that caps US tariffs on Taiwanese goods at 15 percent and provides preferential market access for US industrial and agricultural exports, including cars, and beef and pork products. The Taiwan-US Agreement on Reciprocal Trade confirms a 15 percent US tariff for Taiwanese goods, and grants Taiwanese semiconductors and related products the most-favorable-treatment under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the Executive Yuan said. In addition, 2,072 items — representing nearly 20 percent of Taiwan’s total exports to the US — would be exempt from additional tariffs and be subject only to
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday approved a special pardon exempting a woman in her 80s convicted of killing her disabled son from imprisonment. After carefully reviewing the case, Lai pardoned Lin Liu Lung-tzu (林劉龍子) from the prison sentence while acknowledging her conviction, citing the extreme circumstances she faced, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. Under Article 3 of the Amnesty Act (赦免法), the two kinds of pardons are exempting an offender from the execution of a punishment or declaring the punishment to be invalid. Kuo said Lin Liu had spent more than 50 years caring for her son, before
HOLIDAY RUSH: Airport passenger volume is expected to reach a new high, while southbound road traffic would likely peak from Tuesday As Lunar New Year travelers flock overseas, passenger traffic at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport is expected to shatter records, as Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC, 桃園國際機場), Taiwan’s largest aviation hub operator, projected yesterday’s passenger volume to climb to 167,000. The figure comes after a record single-day high of 161,000 passengers on Thursday, and would surpass the previous pre-COVID-19 pandemic Lunar New Year peak of 166,000 passengers in 2019, TIAC said. Long lines could be seen forming as early as 7am yesterday, filling Terminal 1 of the airport almost to capacity, yet security checks took only 10 to 15 minutes. TIAC urged
RSS