RIYADH: US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a partial ceasefire in Ukraine on Monday as dozens of people were wounded in a missile strike on a Ukrainian city.
With Ukrainian negotiators waiting nearby, a day after they sat down with the US team, the Americans and Russians met in Riyadh with a Black Sea ceasefire top of the agenda.
President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks will pave the way for a breakthrough.
While the talks took place at a luxury hotel in the Saudi capital, 65 people were wounded in a missile attack on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, officials said.
The attack on a "densely populated residential area" damaged apartments and an educational facility, the regional prosecutor's office said. The city's acting mayor earlier said a hospital had been affected.
The Ukrainian negotiating team was expecting a second meeting with the US delegation on Monday, a source in Kyiv said, a sign that progress may have been made.
This month in Jeddah -- days after President Volodymyr Zelensky'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 spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing.
"This was President Trump's proposal and President Putin agreed to it. It was with this mandate that our delegation travelled to Riyadh."
The US-Ukraine and US-Russia talks were originally planned to take place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy, with the United States going back and forth between the delegations. - AFP
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