RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Significant progress made on Ukraine ceasefire – Putin aide

The US-brokered energy truce was a major step towards ending the Ukraine conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitirev, has said during his trip to the US.

Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, traveled to Washington to discuss further steps in normalizing bilateral ties largely suspended in 2022. 

“We are noting a positive dynamic in our relations,” Dmitriev told reporters on Thursday evening.

He added that “significant progress has already been made” towards reaching a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.

“For example, under the leadership of presidents [Vladimir] Putin and [Donald] Trump, an agreement has been made to refrain from strikes on energy infrastructure between Russia and Ukraine. It is a first step to deescalate the Ukraine conflict,” the envoy said.

Following a phone call with Trump on March 18, Putin said that he had instructed the Russian army to halt attacks on Ukrainian energy sites for 30 days. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky later endorsed the arrangement.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev has been routinely violating the truce, including four attacks on Russia’s energy sites on Thursday alone. Ukraine has been targeting fuel depots, gas facilities, and elements of the power grid, the MOD said.

Kiev has claimed that it was following the energy truce and accused Moscow of striking the gas facilities operated by the energy giant Naftogaz.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia and Ukraine trade new accusations on breaches of energy truce

Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Wednesday of launching new attacks against each other's energy facilities, in violation of a U.S.-brokered moratorium.

Both sides said they were providing details of the alleged violations to the United States, which persuaded Moscow and Kyiv to agree to the limited truce last month as a hoped-for stepping stone towards a full ceasefire.

Russia's defence ministry said Ukraine had conducted drone and shelling attacks in the western Kursk region that cut off power to over 1,500 households.

In the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Luhansk region, the state gas company said that a Ukraine drone strike on a gas distribution station had left more than 11,000 customers around the town of Svatove with limited access to gas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian drone hit an energy substation in Sumy region and artillery fire damaged a power line in Dnipropetrovsk, cutting off electricity to nearly 4,000 consumers.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is impatient with both sides to move faster towards ending the three-year war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the fact that President Vladimir Putin had agreed the energy truce was evidence he was serious about engaging in a peace process - something that Kyiv and some of its European allies dispute.

Peskov said that Moscow would keep working with the Americans despite what he called daily Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Russia was breaking the energy truce and called on the U.S. to boost sanctions against Moscow, as Trump has threatened to do.

Ukraine said last month it was willing to accept a full 30-day ceasefire but Putin declined to agree to that, raising a series of questions about how it would be monitored and concerns that Ukraine would use the breathing space to mobilise more soldiers and acquire more weapons from the West.

RT/Reuters