This photo taken on Aug 15, 2024 shows a Ukrainian tank destroyed during Russian attacks in Toretsk. [Photo/Xinhua]
US and Russian delegations will meet in Saudi Arabia on Monday to discuss a potential 30-day cease-fire in the Ukraine-Russia war.
The talks will take place a day after representatives of the United States and Ukraine met in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
"We have concluded our meeting with the American team, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Unerov posted on X on Sunday. "The discussion was productive and focused — we addressed key points including energy."
Protecting energy facilities, critical infrastructure and allowing navigation in the Black Sea are expected to be discussed Monday.
"I think that you're going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea cease-fire on ships between both countries. And from that, you'll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting cease-fire," US special envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
A Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Ukrainian delegation might hold additional discussions with US officials on Monday, The New York Times reported.
The US hopes to reach a broad cease-fire within weeks, targeting a truce agreement by April 20, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
Despite the continued talks, Russia and Ukraine have significant differences over what a peace deal should include.
"Both sides still believe that they can continue the war regardless of the American position," Dmitry Kuznets, a military analyst with the Russian news outlet Meduza told the Times, adding that the two sides' "visions of what an agreement could look like are still infinitely far from each other".
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed last week "that the movement to peace will begin" with the 30-day pause in attacks on energy facilities.
But that plan was cast into doubt, with Moscow saying Ukraine hit an oil depot in southern Russia, while Kiev said Russia had struck hospitals and homes and knocked out power to some railways.
In a post on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "This week alone, more than 1,580 guided aerial bombs, almost 1,100 strike drones and 15 missiles of various types were used against our people. New solutions are needed, with new pressure on Moscow to stop both these strikes and this war."
Russia's Ministry of Defense said on Sunday it had shot down 59 Ukrainian drones overnight.
A moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes could favor Moscow more than Kiev, given it would prevent Ukraine from conducting strikes on Russian oil facilities.
Putin has said he wants Ukraine to drop its ambitions to join NATO.
Ukraine defines joining NATO as a goal in its constitution and says that membership would be the best security guarantee that it can receive as part of a peace deal.
Last month, John Coale, Trump's deputy Ukraine envoy, said the US had not ruled out potential NATO membership for Ukraine — or a return to its pre-2014 borders.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a day earlier had told Ukraine's military allies in Brussels a return to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and that the US did not see NATO membership for Kiev.
Trump has said he does not believe Russia would "allow" Ukraine NATO membership.
The UK and France are looking to create a deterrent force of foreign troops, ships and planes in or around Ukraine after a peace deal is signed.
But some Russian officials have said they could not accept such a force.
Witkoff minimized concerns among NATO allies that Putin might be emboldened by any peace deal in Ukraine.
"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 II," Witkoff said. "And I think the Europeans are beginning to come to that belief, too. But it sort of doesn't matter.
"The agenda is stop the killing, stop the carnage. Let's end this thing," he said.
Russia wants to control all of the four eastern Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, plus the Crimean peninsula.
Russia's Kommersant daily cited unnamed sources who attended a private business event with Putin on Tuesday as saying he wants the US to formally recognize the four regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as part of Russia along with Crimea.
Ukraine says it already recognizes that it cannot recapture some occupied Ukrainian territory by force and that it will have to be returned diplomatically over time. Kiev says, however, that it will never recognize Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territory.
Agencies contributed to this story.
