Key Points
- The US brokered temporary deals with Ukraine and Russia to pause attacks over the Black Sea and against energy targets.
- Both countries accused the other of attacking infrastructure in strikes following the agreement's announcement.
- Russia says a number of conditions must be met before the maritime security deal could be activated.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of not being interested in pursuing "real peace" after a series of overnight drone strikes on Ukrainian cities.
On Tuesday, the United States reached separate deals with Ukraine and Russia to pause their attacks over the Black Sea and against each other's energy targets, but it was not clear when and how the deals would come into force.
Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that regions such as Dnipro, Sumy and Cherkasy had come under Russian attack, with a "massive drone strike" on the city of Kryvyi Rih targeting "a local enterprise and civilian infrastructure".
Zelenskyy called for more pressure from the US to stop Russian strikes.
"Launching such large-scale attacks after ceasefire negotiations is a clear signal to the whole world that Moscow is not going to pursue real peace," he wrote on X.
Russia's defence ministry, meanwhile, accused Ukraine of trying to attack civilian Russian energy infrastructure in three different areas despite a moratorium to suspend such attacks.
The ministry said in a statement that Ukraine had tried to attack a gas storage facility in Russian-annexed Crimea and energy infrastructure in Russia's Kursk and Bryansk regions.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to temporarily suspend strikes against oil refineries, oil and gas pipelines and nuclear power stations, among other targets, for 30 days.
Russia says conditions must be met to activate Black Sea deal
Russia said on Wednesday that a number of conditions must be met before a Black Sea maritime security deal negotiated with the United States can be activated.
While Russian exports of food and fertiliser are not subject to Western sanctions, Moscow has said restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance have amounted to a barrier to shipments.
Russia wants the reconnection of its state agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT international payments system. That and other steps could require agreement from European countries.
"As for the Black Sea grain initiative, it can be activated after a number of conditions are implemented," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
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"These are the same conditions that were included in the (original) Black Sea Initiative ... all the conditions of which were fulfilled except for those concerning the Russian side. So, of course, this time round justice must prevail and we will continue our work with the Americans."
Moscow withdrew from the original deal in 2023, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in 2022, complaining that obstacles to its own food and fertiliser exports had not been eased as promised under the terms of that agreement.
Under the agreement with Russia, the US promised to help restore Russian access to markets for its agricultural and fertiliser exports.
Russia said this would require lifting some sanctions.
Peace agreements
The separate ceasefire agreements are the first formal commitments by the warring sides since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who is pushing for an end to the war and a resumption of US ties with Russia, which has alarmed Ukraine and European countries.
The agreements, if implemented, would represent the clearest progress yet towards a wider ceasefire that the US sees as a stepping stone towards peace talks to bring an end to Russia's three-year-long war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will ask the US to supply weapons if Russia breaks a deal. Source: SIPA USA, AP / Gavriil Grigorov / Alex Brandon
"If the Russians violate this, then I have a direct question for President Trump. If they violate, here is the evidence — we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons, etc," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv after the agreement was announced.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of agreements with just Kyiv, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from Washington to Zelenskyy and his team to do one thing and not the other."
The agreements, reached in Saudi Arabia, follow talks initiated by Trump, who has vowed to swiftly end the war.
The talks followed separate phone calls last week between Trump and the two presidents, Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin.
Putin rejected Trump's proposal for a full ceasefire lasting 30 days, which Ukraine had previously endorsed.
Ukraine's defence minister Rustem Umerov said his country would regard any movement of Russian military vessels outside the eastern part of the Black Sea as a violation and a threat, in which case Ukraine would have the full right to self-defence.
Russia has attacked Ukraine's power grid with missiles and drones throughout the war, arguing that civil energy infrastructure is a legitimate target because it helps Ukraine's war-fighting capability.
More recently, Ukraine has been launching long-range strikes on Russian oil and gas targets, which it says provide fuel for Russian troops and income to fund its war effort.
Early in the war, Russia imposed a de facto naval blockade on Ukraine, one of the world's biggest grain exporters, which threatened to worsen a global food crisis.
But maritime battles have been only a comparatively small part of the war since 2023, when Russia withdrew its naval forces from the eastern Black Sea after a number of successful Ukrainian attacks.
Ukraine was able to reopen its ports and resume exports at about pre-war levels, despite the collapse of a previous United Nations-brokered Black Sea shipping agreement.
The accords are the first aimed at halting energy strikes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The fighting rages on across a 1000km front line.
Trump is pressing both sides to bring a swift end to the war, a goal he promised to achieve when he ran for president last year.
At the same time, he is pursuing a rapid rapprochement with Russia that the US and the Kremlin say could lead to lucrative business opportunities.
Ukraine and its European allies fear Trump could strike a hasty deal with Putin that undermines their security and caves in to Russian demands, including for Ukraine to abandon its ambitions to join the NATO military alliance and give up the entirety of four regions claimed by Russia as its own.
Ukraine has rejected that as tantamount to surrender.
