Ukraine Russia war latest: Trump says Putin ‘dragging his feet’ as Moscow appears to delay Black Sea truce

Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “manipulation” after Moscow said it would only agree to stop firing on ships in the Black Sea if other conditions are met.

The US said earlier on Tuesday that it had secured separate agreements from both Ukraine and Russia to a truce that would protect key shipping routes.

But the Kremlin has now said the agreement will not come into effect unless Russia receives sanctions relief first, and the links between some Russian banks and the international financial system are restored.

Mr Zelensky has said his understanding was that the truce agreements did not require sanctions relief to come into force and would take effect immediately, calling the Kremlin’s statement an attempt to “manipulate” the deals.

As one of the first steps to ending the war in Ukraine, members of the US delegation have sought to have Moscow and Kyiv halt their attacks on each other’s energy facilities and assets in the Black Sea.

But it is still not immediately clear when either agreement will take effect.

“They are already trying to distort agreements and, in fact, deceive both our intermediaries and the entire world,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

“How Russia behaves in the coming days will reveal a lot – if not everything. If there are air raid alerts again, if there is renewed military activity in the Black Sea, if Russian manipulations and threats continue – then new measures will need to be taken, specifically against Moscow,” he said.

Russia launched an overnight drone attack on the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv that provides the war-hit nation with access to the Black Sea, officials said.

The mayor of Mykolaiv said there were emergency power outages early today in the city, following a report by the region’s governor that seven drones were destroyed overnight over the region.

It was not immediately clear whether the power cuts were precautionary or a result of the overnight attack on Mykolaiv.

Russia also attacked Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown Kryvyi Rih overnight, in an assault which sparked fires and damaged buildings but caused no deaths, the head of the city’s military administration said.

“Apparently, this is how the occupiers ‘want peace’,” wrote Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the military administration, on Telegram.

He described it as the biggest drone attack on the city since the war began.

“Most importantly, there were no deaths or injuries.”

Emergency power outages have been imposed in the Ukrainian port city Mykolaiv after overnight Russian attacks, its mayor said.

Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said the southern port city was subject to an air raid alert shortly after midnight, then around 2am and 3am, and again at 7.40am local time.

At least seven Shahed drones were destroyed over the region, according to the regional governor Vitaliy Kim.

Russia has refused to return the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant back to Ukraine, calling Europe’s largest nuclear plant a “Russian facility”.

“The return of the station to Russia’s nuclear sector has been a fait accompli for quite some time,” the Russian foreign ministry said yesterday.

“Transferring the Zaporizhzhia plant to the control of Ukraine or another country is impossible,” it said in a statement.

Russia forcefully captured Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant within days of launching a full-scale military invasion into Ukraine in February 2022 and has since maintained control over the facility, stationing its own staff there.

While Russia illegally declared the region as a whole annexed in the autumn of 2022, its largest city, Zaporizhzhia, remains under Ukrainian control.

The nuclear facility has repeatedly come under drone attacks from both sides and the UN nuclear watchdog has warned against any attacks that could endanger the plant’s reactors.

Last week US president Donald Trump suggested Volodymyr Zelensky consider transferring ownership of Ukraine’s power plants to the US for their own protection.

Ukraine and Russia would likely both prefer prolonging the war over settling for an unfavourable peace deal, according to an unclassified US intelligence assessment.

A report by the US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has stated that Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky “for now probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement,” reported Bloomberg.

According to the intelligence report published yesterday, both leaders likely understand the risks of a prolonged war and impacts like continued economic disruptions for Moscow under the pressure of sanctions that could harm Russia, including through “undesired escalation with the West”.

A protracted war would also impact Kyiv’s standing on the battlefield, as well as potentially its future negotiating position, the assessment said.

Russia’s defence ministry says its forces destroyed at least nine Ukrainian drones overnight, including two over the waters of the Black Sea.

The statement comes just hours after the US said it had struck deals with Ukraine and Russia to pause their attacks over the Black Sea region and against each other’s energy facilities.

The officials did not mention when the Black Sea deals would come into effect.

It was not immediately clear how many drones were launched over Russia overnight and there were no immediate reports of hits on Black Sea or energy targets.

Russian forces continued to fight on several points on the Ukrainian frontline but did not advance in the past 24 hours, according to the US-based think tank The Institute for the Study of War.

In its main war effort in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Kharkiv direction yesterday by conducting ground attacks northeast of the city, the ISW said in its latest assessment.

Russia also continued offensive operations in the Kupiansk direction, east of Kupiansk near Petropavlivka; and southeast of Kupiansk near Stepova Novoselivka, but did not make confirmed advances.

In Donetsk, Russian forces conducted offensive operations northeast of Siversk near Hryhorivka and Bilohorivka, east of Siversk near Verkhnokamyanske, and southeast of Siversk near Ivano-Daryivka in the past 48 hours.

The Russian defence ministry claimed yesterday that its forces have seized Myrne, northeast of Lyman, though there has been no confirmation from Ukraine.

Russia’s new ambassador to the United States Alexander Darchiev will leave for his post in Washington today, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

Russian president Vladimir Putin appointed Mr Darchiev, a veteran diplomat known in the past for public denunciations of the West, as ambassador to the United States on 6 March.

Russia has had no ambassador in Washington since last October when the previous envoy, Anatoly Antonov, left his post.

Ukraine’s delegation in Saudi Arabia has not fully agreed to the idea of lifting sanctions as a condition for a maritime ceasefire, a Ukrainian government source told AP, arguing that Russia has done nothing to warrant having the financial penalties rolled back.

The official has also confirmed Kyiv’s objection to the exclusion of European countries from the sanctions discussions, despite most of them being within the European Union’s responsibility.

Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov warned that Kyiv would see the deployment of Russian warships in the western Black Sea as a “violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation” there and “a threat to the national security of Ukraine”.

“In this case, Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defence,” he said.