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The United States has agreed to help Russia boost its agricultural and fertiliser exports to the world market in exchange for a maritime security deal in the Black Sea.

The White House, the Kremlin and Ukraine announced the deal on Tuesday after teams from the US and Russia met in Saudi Arabia to carve out a pathway towards peace in Ukraine.

These negotiations came amid the Trump administration’s push to end the war in Ukraine that has dragged on since 2022. President Donald Trump shifted US policy on Ukraine by proactively engaging with Moscow and accepting some of its biggest demands, including ruling out Ukraine’s NATO membership.

Here is what the latest deal is about:

What is the Black Sea deal about?

A statement released by the White House on Tuesday said Ukraine and Russia had agreed to stop the use of force and the military use of commercial vessels in the Black Sea.

The White House also issued an almost identical statement, suggesting that the US and Ukraine had agreed to these terms.

The Kremlin issued a statement, adding that the US and Russia would organise “appropriate control measures through inspection of such vessels”, without specifying what these measures would be.

In return, the US will “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions”, the White House statement said.

But the Kremlin statement was more specific in terms of Russia’s demands: it added that the pause on fighting in the Black Sea would come into force only after sanctions are lifted from the Russian agricultural bank, Rosselkhozbank, alongside other financial organisations which work with international food trade, including that of fish products and fertilisers. The Kremlin statement added that these organisations must be connected to the SWIFT system and any sanctions and restrictions on food, fertiliser, ships and agricultural machinery must be lifted.

SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is an international financial artery which allows for the better flow of funds transfers across borders. A month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, seven Russian banks were removed from SWIFT. Rosselkhozbank was removed a few months later, in June 2022.

Since the beginning of the war, the US and its allies have placed at least 21,692 sanctions on Russian individuals, media organisations, or institutions in the military, energy sector, aviation, shipbuilding and telecommunications sectors.

The statements said the US and Russia “welcome the good offices of third countries with a view toward supporting the implementation of the energy and maritime agreements”. While the statements did not mention specific countries, Turkiye has previously mediated a Black Sea grain deal, and India has helped convince Russia to stick with it.

What else did the White House and Kremlin say?

Both the White House and Kremlin statements said Washington and Moscow would “develop measures” to implement an earlier agreement between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin over a phone call on March 18 to halt attacks on Russian and Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

This agreement was accepted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But as in the past, details remain vague. The latest US and Russian statements do not specify the “measures” that would lead to a halt in attacks on energy infrastructure. Since this agreement, Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacking energy infrastructure.

The Kremlin statement added that there is a possibility of “extension and withdrawal from the [ban on energy strikes] agreement in the event of non-compliance by one of the parties”.

How did Zelenskyy respond?

In his nightly video address posted to his X account on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said, “Ukraine is ready to work as swiftly as possible and with absolute transparency to end the war.”

However, he expressed distrust in Moscow, saying: “There is something that the Kremlin is lying about again: that allegedly the silence in the Black Sea depends on the issue of sanctions, and that allegedly the start date for the silence in the energy sector is March 18.”

“If there is renewed military activity in the Black Sea, if Russian manipulations and threats continue, then new measures will need to be taken, specifically against Moscow,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said further discussions were needed to iron out the details of the Black Sea deal.

“The Ukrainian side emphasizes that all movement by Russia of its military vessels outside of Eastern part of the Black Sea will constitute violation of the spirit of this agreement, will be regarded as violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation of the Black Sea and threat to the national security of Ukraine,” Umerov wrote in an X post on Tuesday. He added that in this scenario, Ukraine “will have full right to exercise right to self-defense”.

“For the effective implementation of the arrangements, it is important to hold additional technical consultations as soon as possible to agree on all the details and technical aspects of the implementation, monitoring and control of the arrangements,” Umerov wrote.

What were the talks on the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia?

From March 23 to 25, a delegation from the US met separately with Russian and Ukrainian teams in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh.

The Russian delegation was led by diplomat Grigory Karasin, who has previously been deputy foreign minister and ambassador to the United Kingdom. Alongside Karasin, the Russian team also included Sergei Beseda, a veteran of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The Ukrainian delegation was led by Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov and Pavlo Palisa, a top military adviser to Zelenskyy.

The Reuters news agency reported that the US team included White House National Security Council’s senior director, Andrew Peek, and Director of Policy Planning Staff Michael Anton, according to a source briefed on planning for the talks in Riyadh.

How did we get here?

This deal is a resumption of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, struck in 2022 with the mediation of the United Nations and Turkiye.

The initiative entailed a three-year memorandum of agreement allowing the safe export of 33 million metric tonnes of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea despite the war. In return, UN officials agreed to facilitate Russian food and fertiliser exports to foreign markets.

In 2023, Moscow pulled out of this deal, citing difficulties and hurdles in exporting its own food and fertilisers. While Russian food and fertiliser companies are not the target of Western sanctions, Moscow said restrictions on logistics, payments and insurance fees had hindered shipping.

In advance of the talks in Riyadh, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told CBS News on March 23 that the resumption of the grain deal would be the main focus of the talks. “We are now going to talk about a Black Sea maritime ceasefire so that both sides can move grain, fuel, and start conducting trade again in the Black Sea,” he said.

Could the deal help restore peace over the Black Sea?

John E Herbst, a senior director at the Washington, DC-based think tank Atlantic Council, called the deal a “useful step, but not a major one” in an analysis published on its website. This is because the Black Sea has not seen major military activity after Ukrainian naval drones chased the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea, he added.

On the other hand, Matthew Kroenig from the Atlantic Council wrote that the announcement was “a step toward circumscribing the conflict on the road to eventual peace”.

Daniel Fried, the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, had a different view, however.

“The United States risks being sucked down a rabbit hole of concessions, easing pressure on Russia while Russian forces continue to attack Ukrainian cities and civilians,” Fried wrote on the Atlantic Council website. “Today’s deal is no peace through strength.”

What’s next?

Future talks between the US and Russia would see the involvement of the UN and other countries, Russian news agency TASS reported, citing Karasin.

“Everything was discussed – there was an intense, challenging dialogue, but it was very useful for us and for the Americans,” Karasin said.

“We will continue to do this, involving the international community, first of all, the United Nations and individual countries,” said Karasin, without specifying which individual countries he was talking about.

“In general, the impression was of a constructive dialogue, which is needed and necessary. The Americans are also interested in this.”

How is Europe viewing the Riyadh talks?

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to hold talks on Thursday to discuss a “coalition of the willing” that the British leader had announced on March 2.

The idea is that a coalition of Ukraine’s willing European allies would devise terms for peace and present them to the US, and potentially play a prominent role in offering security guarantees to Ukraine under any peace agreement with Russia.

However, Europe has been kept out of the recent discussions in Saudi Arabia, and the coalition was not mentioned in the White House and Kremlin’s statements.

Sometimes journalists befuddle me, and I’m a journalist – although my touchy detractors would dispute that.

Perhaps like you, I have been watching – with a healthy dose of bemusement and amusement – the outrage-du-jour dominate the latest 24-hour “news cycle” in North America and beyond.

Such is the squirrel-like attention span of many of my perpetually outraged colleagues, that today’s outrage usually has a short life expectancy since another outrage inevitably comes along tomorrow.

But the outrage seizing Washington, DC – the capital of outrage – appears poised to consume the Beltway press corps for more than a day or two.

When that happens, the outrage tends to evolve into a four-alarm scandal which journalists crave because it often translates into a big, ego-boosting award for the lucky scribe who triggered the original outrage.

The defining ingredients of a scandal have already fallen into predictable place: a host of outraged politicians – this time largely Democrats – and a wind-up stable of “national security experts” have rushed onto TV to say that they are outraged and to demand investigations into why the outrage happened and resignations of the powerful architects of the outrage.

I reckon that soon enough the new scandal will be christened “Appgate” by some lethargic editor in homage to the old scandal of all scandals – Watergate – thus confirming its status as a scandal.

Why Appgate?

Apparently, much of America’s national security establishment, up to and including Vice President JD Vance, thought it was a wise idea to start an 18-person group chat on the Signal messaging app to have a detailed tete-a-tete about whether to bomb Yemen before they bombed Yemen.

Fuming pundits are in a tizzy because these sorts of “highly classified” discussions are supposed to occur in the secure “Situation Room” near the Oval Office, not in an online forum using open-source encryption that any kid capable of solving a Rubik’s cube in less than 30 seconds can bypass on a dare.

Oh, and a familiar gallery of hysterical cable news personalities have been running around in apoplectic circles, shouting “all is lost” after learning that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the establishment-hugging The Atlantic magazine, was invited to join the select “chat group” by mistake.

An astonished Goldberg was privy, in real time, to what constitutes “war planning” in United States President Donald Trump’s “merit-based” regime that values incompetence over discretion as a job prerequisite.

Cue the outrage machine to lurch into high and hyperbolic gear.

I acknowledge that Vance and clownish company make the hapless Maxwell Smart look like John Le Carre’s fictional master spy, George Smiley.

Still, a lot of the anguished huffing and puffing misses the cheeky point.

Rather than denouncing the Trump administration’s accidental openness and transparency, the fourth estate should, instead, be celebrating it.

Generation after generation of high-minded journalists have lectured presidents and prime ministers on the necessity for more “light” to staunch the suffocating secrecy that, as a disconcerting rule, envelops the affairs of state.

When the stealth shroud drops – for whatever reason by whoever’s hand – grateful reporters and editors must exploit the welcomed opportunity for as long as they can and share the wonderful fruits of their unexpected all-access-pass with audiences far and wide.

So, let’s give credit where credit is due, and thank US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz for his stunning hospitality by allowing a journalist to record the childish musings – complete with a slew of infantile emojis – of a bunch of giddy frat-boys who remain convinced that they are “statesmen”.

I wish “senior officials” in other secrecy-obsessed countries would follow Waltz’s laudable lead and let journalists witness – on purpose or in error – the banal “inner workings” of cavalier members of the bureaucratic equivalent of the so-called “principals committee”, particularly when it involves lethal matters of war and peace.

That way, the stubborn myths would be laid bare about the “serious” men and women who populate the shrines to power in Western capitals and are obliged to “debate” the consequences and implications of killing innocents in sovereign nations.

Every journalist in every newsroom in the world knows that Goldberg’s good fortune is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Sure, he is “outraged” at the outrageous security breach. Truth be told, it has been a blessing for Goldberg’s fast-fading-into-the-sunset career, too.

He is the talk of the incestuous town. Goldberg’s doting chums on CNN and MSNBC – who refer to the Washington fixture as “JG” – have shone the intoxicating limelight on the suddenly in-demand editor to revel in his agenda-setting scoop that has ricocheted across the globe.

All the flattering attention has, I suspect, acted as a balm to soothe Goldberg’s “outrage”.

The mystery to me is why did he not play possum and take full advantage of being a silent partner at the heart of what passes for the Trump “brain trust” carving out what passes for a “foreign policy”.

Goldberg ought to have hovered quietly and gathered a few more delicious “revelations” before pulling his parachute.

Shortsighted fool.

I know. I know. Outraged patriot that he is, Goldberg put the “national interest” ahead of his professional interests to raise the urgent alarm.

Right.

The other mystery is why Trump – who reportedly does not clock in on-the-job until almost noon, was not party to the group chat’s plans to attack those troublesome Houthis.

I’m spitballing here, but it strikes me that America’s clueless commander-in-chief, who admits that he is clueless about many things, does not have – like me – a clue what the Signal app is and how to use it.

Trump may have had other pressing concerns on his preoccupied mind like organising hefty corporate sponsorships for the White House’s annual Easter egg hunt or making sure the Oval Office button to deliver his beloved Diet Coke on a silver platter was in reliable order.

Ah, the burdens of being the “leader of the free world”.

We can also confirm, courtesy of JG, that Vance and blustering et al believe that Europeans are “pathetic” “freeloaders” who have been bailed out, again and again, by the US.

If there was any doubt before, the transatlantic “alliance” was extinguished on, of all places, an app.

That is not all that may have been extinguished.

Vance’s prospects of succeeding Trump took a potentially fatal hit after the ambitious vice president committed the capital sin of arguing privately that his vindictive boss was making a “mistake” by strafing the Houthis.

What a lovely dividend that would be.

We owe Trump and his 18 chatroom “dwarfs” a debt of gratitude for their rank and revealing ineptness.

Keep up the fine work, please.