US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that there is growing interest from the international community in negotiating a limited truce in the Black Sea aimed at ensuring the export of energy resources and grain from Russia and Ukraine, Reuters reported.
At a press conference, the top US diplomat said Washington was considering proposals from Turkey and India that would make it possible for deliveries of these commodities to resume, although the US continues to insist on negotiating not only a truce but also an end to the entire war, which has entered its fifth year.
Russia’s full-scale invasion took center stage during a two-day meeting of G20 foreign ministers, which was also attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov despite opposition from European countries and Canada, which said that doing so legitimized Russian aggression.
The forum ended without a joint statement or an agreement to address the multitude of problems facing the global economy, Reuters noted.
Rubio defended the invitation to Lavrov on the grounds that there could be no end to the war without diplomatic talks with Russia, but acknowledged that an end to the conflict was not currently on the horizon. He said the US communicates frequently with the Ukrainian leadership, but Ukraine’s foreign minister was not invited to the meeting.
Rubio noted that there is growing interest – and perhaps momentum – in reaching partial agreements to halt attacks on grain vessels and, in some cases, on ships carrying energy resources in the Black Sea.
“This threatens the food and energy security of the world,” the secretary of state told reporters after the two-day meeting with his counterparts from the world’s 20 largest economies, which revealed serious differences over the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. “Our desire is to achieve (such agreements). Of course, this will not end the war, but it will resolve at least one of its aspects,” he added.
Rubio added that the top priority for US diplomacy remains negotiating a comprehensive agreement to end the war despite the failures so far to achieve it.
“This is a very terrible and devastating war,” the secretary of state said, adding that it threatened to spread to other countries because of illegal attempts at sabotage and drone strikes that had entered NATO airspace.
Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand told Reuters in an interview that she would not have wanted Lavrov to be invited, but said she had used the opportunity to raise directly with her Russian counterpart the issue of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“I looked him in the eye and denounced the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the abduction of Ukrainian children and attacks on Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea. All of these are unacceptable actions that violate international law and international humanitarian law,” Anand said, referring to the closed-door discussions held among the ministers on Friday.
Anand added that she had discussed with her Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha and India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar the introduction of a limited ceasefire in the Black Sea and the imposition of a moratorium on attacks against Ukraine’s energy sector.
Anand said that an unspecified number of participants at the G20 forum had called for some kind of truce, with the emphasis placed on securing food supply chains and negotiating an end to attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid and energy infrastructure ahead of the coming winter.
“We need to resolve these issues before winter arrives in Ukraine,” she said, noting that Canada had been holding concrete and substantive discussions on a ceasefire in the Black Sea since the UN General Assembly session in September.
India and Egypt are two of the worst-affected countries and want to ensure the safety of their ships – and sailors. Ukraine is fully committed to the issue, but the same cannot be said of Russia, which has shown no willingness to help make progress, Anand said.
On Friday, Lavrov said that Moscow’s position on the conflict in Ukraine remained unchanged and that Russia could not allow Ukraine to become a “military threat to the legitimate security interests of the Russian Federation,” Russian agencies reported.
Rubio called on G20 participants to cooperate wherever possible in view of the complex set of economic and geopolitical challenges facing each of the countries.
“And since we are all facing these challenges, we must work together to overcome them,” he said. “The future of our countries depends on our willingness to understand that although our interests do not always coincide, we must make joint efforts to achieve them when there is overlap between them,” he added.
Rubio told reporters that he had spoken briefly with Lavrov on the sidelines of the meeting, and that the topic had been the possibility of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum (which will be held later this month in China), as well as during the G20 summit at Trump’s “Doral” golf club in Miami in December.
Rubio said that Putin had not yet made a firm commitment to attend the G20 forum. The secretary of state did not rule out the possibility that Trump could also invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “especially if some positive result could come from it.”
WHAT THE TURKISH AND INDIAN PROPOSALS ENVISAGE
Media outlets in Turkey and India highlighted Rubio’s statement that Washington was considering proposals from the two countries to address the issue of shipping in the Black Sea.
The secretary of state did not go into detail about exactly what they involved, but according to the Turkish newspaper “Yeni Şafak,” Ankara is proposing the establishment of a Black Sea grain corridor.
Rubio revealed only that several countries were considering taking on the role of potential guarantors for implementing the initiative.
The issue of security in the Black Sea was also discussed at Saturday’s meeting in Istanbul between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Zelenskyy, Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported.
The Turkish leader said that any attacks on civilian vessels in the Black Sea were unacceptable, regardless of which side carried them out.
Zelenskyy said that he and Erdoğan had agreed to work toward opening a grain corridor in the Black Sea.
“President Erdoğan and I discussed some ideas and proposals that could be useful,” the Ukrainian president said.
His Turkish counterpart added that talks on ensuring freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, which is a strategic sea route, would continue.
“I am convinced that reaching an agreement on this issue will give fresh impetus to efforts to secure lasting peace in Ukraine,” he said.
Turkey maintains good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, the agencies noted.
Last Wednesday, during a telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump, Erdoğan expressed his readiness to support efforts to revive the diplomatic process and end the war, the Turkish presidency said.