NEGOTIATORS from Russia and the United States sat down today to hammer out a proposed partial ceasefire in Ukraine.

This came a day after separate talks were held by the US with representatives of Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of undermining efforts to reach a pause in the three-year-old war.

Moscow and Kiev agreed in principle last Wednesday to a limited ceasefire after US President Donald Trump spoke with the countries’ leaders, but the parties have offered different views of what targets would be off-limits to attack.

While the White House said that “energy and infrastructure” would be covered, the Kremlin said the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he would also like to see railways and ports protected.

Today’s were expected to address some of those differences, as well as a potential pause in attacks in the Black Sea to ensure the safety of commercial shipping.

Russian and US representatives met in the morning in the Saudi capital, Russia’s Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies reported. The US and Ukrainian teams met there the day before.

Grigory Karasin, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s upper house and a participant in today’s talks, told the Interfax news agency the negotiations were going on in a “creative way” and that the Russian and US delegations “understand each other’s views.”

Meanwhile, both Russia and Ukraine continued to launch attacks across their borders.

The Russian Defence Ministry said today that a Ukrainian drone was shot down after an attack on an oil pumping station in southern Russia that serves a pipeline carrying Kazakhstan’s Caspian Sea oil to the Russian port of Novorossiisk for export. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military has been fulfilling President Vladimir Putin’s order to halt attacks on energy facilities for 30 days. 

He accused Ukraine of derailing the partial ceasefire with attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including a gas metering station in Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine’s General Staff rejected Moscow’s accusations and blamed the Russian military for shelling the station, a claim Mr Peskov called “absurd.”

President Zelensky has emphasised that Ukraine is open to President Trump’s proposal of a full, 30-day ceasefire. 

President Putin has made a complete ceasefire conditional on a halt of arms supplies to Kiev and a suspension of Ukraine’s military mobilisation.