Russia and Ukraine appeared to have stopped targeting each other’s energy infrastructure this week, although the details of an agreement reached on Sunday were still being worked out.

“I can confirm that since this date, March 25 … there have been no attacks on energy objects. Neither Russian attacks on our energy objects, or our attacks on Russian energy objects,” Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told the Kyiv Independent on Thursday.

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In reaching the partial ceasefire agreement, the United States appeared to abandon the comprehensive ceasefire proposal it agreed with Ukraine on March 11.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected it a week later during a phone call with US President Donald Trump, and negotiated a vaguely defined ceasefire on energy and infrastructure instead, to which Ukraine was not a party.

The US brought Ukraine on board with the smaller agreement in Jeddah after shuttling between Ukrainian and Russian negotiating teams.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said on Sunday evening that “a ceasefire in our energy sector can begin today”.

Russia earlier accused Ukraine of violating the ceasefire.

“Despite Zelensky’s public statement … the [Kyiv] regime continued to strike at the energy infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” said Russia’s Ministry of Defence.

It accused Ukraine of launching two attack drones over Crimea on Wednesday night targeting an underground gas storage facility, and of launching another drone against a high-tension power line in the Russian regions of Bryansk and Kursk, causing a cascade of blackouts.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces denied those attacks.

“The military department of the aggressor country spreads false and groundless accusations in order to prolong the war,” they said.

The governors of Crimea, Kursk and Bryansk did not report Ukrainian UAVs in their airspace, as they usually do.

Russia has been on a diplomatic messaging offensive over the past 10 days, accusing Ukraine of violating ceasefires it had not agreed to.

On Friday it accused Ukraine of blowing up a gas measuring station in Sudzha, in Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Sudzha was “shelled by the Russians themselves” in a “campaign to discredit Ukraine”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov fired back. Ukraine’s denial “shows how much one can trust the Kyiv regime”, he said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova piled on, too.

Ukraine has “already violated the truce proposed by the United States with an attack on the Russian power facility. Now the question is how Washington will continue to be managed with the ‘mad terrorist scum’.”

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Sudzha is the point where a major Russian gas pipeline crosses into Ukraine.

The pipeline was essentially defunct after Russia drastically reduced gas flows to Europe in 2022, and was completely shut down on December 31, when a transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expired.

Ukraine had abundant opportunity to destroy or shut down Russian gas pipelines crossing its territory throughout three years of war but has not done so.

Russia says Ukraine wants to ‘thwart’ peace plans

Russia’s messaging on the unreliability of Ukraine has been a consistent theme during the war, and has intensified in recent days in an apparent effort to undermine Ukraine’s negotiating position.

For example, after Putin rejected the comprehensive ceasefire in favour of a partial one on March 18, the Kremlin announced unilaterally that the ceasefire was immediately taking effect for 30 days, without Ukrainian agreement.

Two days later, Zakharova accused Kyiv of violating the ceasefire by attacking the Engels air force base in Russia.

“[Kyiv] wants to thwart peace initiatives, including those put forward by Trump, by attacking Russian energy facilities,” Zakharova said.

Zelenskyy’s government “showed a complete lack of political will for peace”, she said.

That attack targeted ammunition, Ukraine’s General Staff said on Thursday. It resulted in the destruction of 96 air-launched cruise missiles from secondary detonations. The missiles were to have been used in three air raids against Ukraine in March and April, the staff said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry, on the other hand, admitted to striking Ukrainian energy facilities on the first night of Putin’s unilateral ceasefire, and on the following night.

One aspect of the March 18 phone call did demonstrably work – Russia and Ukraine exchanged 175 prisoners of war each, and Russia returned to Ukraine an additional 22 hospitalised soldiers.

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But Russia kept up its messaging even on Sunday.

As the agreement was announced, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced Zelenskyy in an interview with Russia’s Channel One, saying, “We cannot take this man at his word.”

That same day, Russia attacked Ukraine with an Iskander-M ballistic missile and 139 Shahed drones. Ukraine shot down 78 of them and disoriented 34 electronically.

But other Russian attacks were deadly. Three people were killed in a drone strike in Kyiv on Saturday, including a father and his five-year-old daughter. A family of three were killed in a drone strike in Zaporizhia on Friday.

The White House did not respond to Russian assertions, spending the week in a defensive crouch after its top national security officials were revealed to have discussed operational defence plans against Yemeni Houthis on a commercial platform, and inadvertently included a journalist in that discussion.

EU and US far apart on ceasefire terms

Ukrainian and Russian technical teams were reportedly ironing out aspects of Sunday’s agreement, after separate Russian, Ukrainian and US statements that did not align.

In addition to banning strikes on energy infrastructure, the White House said, the agreement aimed to secure safe navigation in the Black Sea and “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports”.

Russia went further, saying the agreement could only come into force if sanctions were lifted against Russian shipping and agricultural machinery.

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Zelenskyy denied the US and Ukrainian teams had agreed on Russian access to grain and fertiliser markets.

“We believe that this is a weakening of positions and a relaxation of sanctions,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Tuesday. “This was not on our agenda.”

The European Union agreed with Zelenskyy.

The European Council of the 27 EU leaders said on March 20 that it “remains ready to step up pressure on Russia, including through further sanctions and by strengthening the enforcement of existing measures … to weaken its ability to continue waging its war of aggression”.

It said $300bn in Russian central bank assets would remain frozen “until Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates it for the damage caused”.

The European Commission’s foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper reinforced that message on Wednesday, saying the EU would consider lifting sanctions if Russia ended “its unprovoked aggression” and withdrew unconditionally.

The situation on the ground

Meanwhile, Ukraine continued to hold its own against continuing Russian assaults throughout the week, which continued to focus on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia operational group of Ukrainian ground forces, told a telethon that while Russian attacks in Pokrovsk were intensifying, Russian forces were weakening.

“There are fewer of them, and they have less equipment. The guys who are fighting in those areas say that they are seeing fewer Russians right now,” he said on Saturday. “The Russians have simply suffered heavy losses. But they cannot leave this area, because it is still part of their plans to control this part of the Donetsk region,” he said.

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Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii said Russian daily casualty rates were climbing. The number of Russians killed and wounded in three years of war had reportedly crossed the 900,000 mark, with 540,000 of those casualties in the past 15 months.

Ukraine’s General Staff on Thursday said a drone strike on the Engels-2 airfield in Russia a week earlier had resulted in the destruction of 96 air-launched cruise missiles from secondary detonations. The missiles were to have been used in three air raids against Ukraine in March and April, they said.

Ukraine has suffered a setback in the Russian region of Kursk in the past two weeks, losing most of the ground it captured in a counter-invasion last summer.

One of Ukraine’s stated reasons for that initiative was that it forestalled a new invasion Russia was preparing in its Sumy and Kharkiv regions in the autumn.

Russia was reviving those invasion plans now that Ukraine had been beaten back in Kursk, Zelenskyy told French newspaper Le Figaro on Wednesday.

Ukrainian Border Guard spokesman Andriy Demchenko told a telethon that Russian reconnaissance and sabotage groups were already moving deeper into the Sumy region.

“The enemy does not give up its sabotage activities. Previously, most enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups were exposed in the north of Sumy region. Now, in some cases, we are recording attempts by enemy groups to move closer to the southern part of Sumy region and the southeast, when such groups are trying to cross the state border,” he said.

Demchenko also told a telethon that Russian forces were conducting shelling and air attacks in Sumy. Such activities had virtually stopped at the height of Ukraine’s Kursk operation.

On the day of the agreement in Jeddah, Sumy police recorded at least 300 Russian strikes in 43 different settlements.

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A day earlier, Zelenskyy said 90 people were injured, including 17 children, after a Russian missile attack on a school and residential buildings in Sumy. He said, “The war was brought from Russia, and it is to Russia that the war must be pushed back.”