Donald Trump has announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, apparently without consulting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said the deal to stop long-range attacks was “news to me”.
In a social media post, the US 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. Zelenskyy 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,” the Ukrainian president told the Axios website.
Earlier, Zelenskyy rebuffed Trump’s demand made on Saturday that Kyiv stop bombing Russian oil refineries. Zelenskyy said Moscow had 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.
A furious Zelenskyy 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 said Zelenskyy should “damn well stop” hitting Russian refineries. Ukraine needed a “new leader”, he said on Saturday.
Responding to Trump, Zelenskyy 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 Zelenskyy 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 Zelenskyy 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 Russia’s economy, striking oil complexes, warehouses and datacentres.
Russia’s own bombing campaign has been relentless. On Saturday it killed 23 people in the city of Zaporizhzhia, including four children, and hit a five-storey apartment block in the frontline town of Sloviansk. Zelenskyy said Moscow’s aerial campaign involved thousands of aerial bombs and jet-powered drones. It continued “unabated”, he said.
The head of Ukraine’s foreign affairs committee, Oleksandr Merezhko, said Trump’s “bullying” demand for Zelenskyy to quit had strengthened him at home “paradoxically”, after recent damaging corruption scandals. “Putin’s plan is to decapitate Zelenskyy and remove him as a wartime leader. Trump is siding with Putin,” Merezhko said.
He added: “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 they funded Russia’s war machine and acknowledged that a cutoff 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 American 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 stunned Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent newspaper.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy shored up support in a series of conversations with key European allies including the UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb. Downing Street said Burnham recognised the last 24 hours had been “difficult” for Ukraine and “reiterated his complete solidarity”.
Downing Street said the two leaders agreed “to maintain pressure on Russia” and to strengthen the sanctions regime, despite Trump’s efforts to the contrary. “Russia should agree to an immediate energy ceasefire, ending its brutal strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and its attacks on shipping in the Black Sea,” a statement added.
Speaking over the weekend, Zelenskyy said Trump’s decision empowered Putin and gave him “extra money for the war”, running into millions and “perhaps billions”. “It is certainly not fair. It is certainly not how partners should act. And, in my view, it is a weak decision,” he said.
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Luke Harding’s Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest is published by Guardian Faber