Donald Trump has announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, apparently without consulting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy who said the deal to stop long-range attacks was “news to me”.
In a social media post, the United States president claimed the two sides had reached an agreement. “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” he wrote on Truth Social.
He offered no further details. Zelenskiy said he was surprised by the announcement, but would agree to it if Vladimir Putin did the same. “If President Trump negotiated it with Putin – please tell us when the ceasefire begins. We are ready and we will accept it,” Zelenskiy told the Axios website.
Both Britain and Canada said they would back an energy ceasefire.
“Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure over the weekend,” Andy Burnham, the British prime minister, said on Sunday.
“This is an attack on Ukrainian civilians, plunging them into cold and darkness.
“The UK strongly supports President Trump’s call today for a sustained energy ceasefire to start now.
“I discussed this with Volodymyr Zelenskiy yesterday: Ukraine is ready if Russia stops its attacks. This is the best route to get energy and fuel back into world markets.”
Separately, reports on Sunday said the US was threatening to stop the procurement system that provided Ukraine with weapons in order to press Kyiv to halt its deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
Officials in Europe, who received calls from US officials or were briefed on them, said the US was lobbying European capitals and Kyiv to try to end the attacks on Russian oil refineries, the Financial Times reported.
The message from the US included threats to cut off intelligence sharing and Purl (the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List) mechanism for procuring US weapons for Ukraine, the report said.
“They are calling Kyiv . … They are calling everyone [in Europe],” said an official who received a call from a US defence official.
Earlier, Ukraine’s president had rebuffed Trump’s demand made on Saturday that Kyiv stop bombing Russian oil refineries. Zelenskiy said that Moscow has to first halt its own “brutal” attacks on his country’s energy infrastructure.
Any deal to end long-range drone strikes by Ukraine on targets inside Russia would have to be “reciprocal”, he said. It should be backed by “real guarantees” – meaning punitive measures against Moscow from Ukraine’s allies, including the US.
This is not the first time Trump has announced an energy ceasefire deal. He made the same claim in September, which turned out to be untrue. Ukrainian officials said Russia was still bombing Ukraine on Sunday, with several energy sites damaged.
The fast-moving row between Washington and Kyiv began on Friday when Trump announced he was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports. He said the move would reduce global and domestic fuel prices before next month’s US midterm elections.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Russia is unwilling to stop attacks on energy infrastructure. Photograph: Andrej Cukic/EPA
A furious Zelenskiy called the decision “weak” and said it would generate “billions” in extra revenue for Putin, enabling him to wage war “even more intensely”. An equally irate Trump warned that Zelenskiy should “damn well stop” hitting Russian refineries. Ukraine needed a “new leader”, he said on Saturday.
Responding to Trump, Zelenskiy said it was up to Ukrainians to choose “one or another leader”. He told ABC News he was willing to accept Trump’s demands and to organise elections, but only if Putin agreed to a “total” 60-day ceasefire.
The bitter public feud is the most serious between the US and Ukraine since last year, when Trump berated Zelenskiy in the Oval Office.
The New York Times has reported that US officials have offered the Kremlin lucrative economic incentives in exchange for a ceasefire. They reportedly include releasing billions in Russian sovereign assets that are frozen. The Trump administration also revisited a plan to sell parts of Russia’s energy company, Lukoil. The multibillion deal would benefit Middle Eastern investors, the paper reported, some with “business ties” to US negotiators.
On Saturday, Trump berated Zelenskiy and said he had refused to make a deal to end the fighting. In response, Ukraine’s president laid the blame for Europe’s biggest war since 1945 on “Russia and Russia alone”. “It is possible to stop strikes on energy infrastructure as early as today, but Putin does not want to do so,” he said.
Ukrainian officials point out that the White House is demanding Kyiv give up its most effective weapon, without demanding any corresponding concessions from Russia. In recent weeks, Kyiv has dealt a major blow to the Kremlin’s economy, striking oil complexes, warehouses and data centres.
Russia’s own bombing campaign has been relentless. Zelenskiy said Moscow’s aerial campaign involved thousands of aerial bombs and jet-powered drones. It continued “unabated”, he said.
Russian attacks killed six people in two Ukrainian cities on Sunday, including a strike on a grocery store in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where three people died and 20 were injured, officials said. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said two children were among the injured.
In a separate attack in western Ukraine, officials said a Russian strike killed three people.
The head of Ukraine’s foreign affairs committee, Oleksandr Merezhko, said Trump’s “bullying” demand for Zelenskiy to quit had strengthened him at home “paradoxically”, after recent damaging corruption scandals. “Putin’s plan is to decapitate Zelenskiy and remove him as a wartime leader. Trump is siding with Putin,” Merezhko said.
“I’m afraid that behind this situation is Trump’s worldview. He wants to do business with Putin. For him, Ukraine seems like an obstacle to be removed. Both Trump and Putin wish to pressure us into capitulation.”
Referring to the notorious 1939 agreement between Nazi Germany and the USSR, Merezhko said: “We are moving to a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and to a world of strongmen and spheres of influence.”
Merezhko said Ukraine would continue to destroy enemy oil refineries, against US wishes, because these funded Russia’s war machine and he acknowledged that a cut-off of US intelligence sharing with Kyiv – threatened by the Trump administration – would “blind” Ukraine’s air defence systems. “This would be an act of complicity with Putin’s genocide. It would mean more dead civilians and dead children,” he said.
Ukrainian negotiators had been meeting in Florida with their US counterparts, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, when Trump announced the US was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel. Blindsided, the Ukrainians went home early. “It felt like a trap,” one Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent newspaper. – The Guardian, Reuters and Press Association