The situation in the Black Sea was one of the issues discussed during the telephone conversation between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on 18 March.
As the CFTS portal reports, information from the Russian side suggests that Putin is urging Trump to enable Russia to regain the positions it lost in the Black Sea as a result of the successful operations of the Ukrainian Defense Forces and to increase pressure on shipping from and to Ukrainian seaports.
"The Russian president responded constructively to Donald Trump's proposal to implement a well-known initiative on the safety of navigation in the Black Sea. It was agreed to start negotiations to further elaborate on the specific details of such an agreement," the Kremlin’s press service said in a statement.
An official statement from the White House said that the leaders agreed “that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea.”
In practice, such initiatives mean that Russia wants to regain control over the northwestern part of the Black Sea, from which the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been expelled as a result of successful operations by the Ukrainian armed forces and military intelligence.
This is confirmed by another wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine's port infrastructure and the simultaneous spread of media narratives about the need to return to the “grain corridor” framework, in which Russia could control and sabotage shipping from Ukrainian ports.
