March 04, 2025
As a consequence of Friday's Oval Office Shouting Match President Trump has halted military aid to Ukraine.
Just hours later the (former) President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenski agreed to submit to Trump's wishes:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa - 15:37 UTC · Mar 4, 2025 ·I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
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Zelenski acknowledges Trump's primacy in their relation.
Zelenski then introduces a 'new' idea into the 'ceasefire' talks:
We are ready to work fast to end the war, and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same. Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the US to agree a strong final deal.
This is an attempt to delay further steps.
It is also a revamp of the 'truce in the sky' idea President Macron had introduced into the discussion during the last weekend:
In an interview with Le Figaro newspaper, he proposed a four-week truce "in the air, at sea and on energy infrastructure". It would not cover ground fighting along the front line in the east.
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In a separate interview, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said: "Such a truce on air, sea and energy infrastructure would allow us to determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is acting in good faith when he commits to a truce. And that's when real peace negotiations could start."
Britain however had immediately rejected the motion.
Macron's idea was not new at all. There have been several agreements between Russia and Ukraine to stop large range attacks against each others infrastructure. It was Ukraine which had blocked or violated (archived) these agreements each and every time.
As FT reported in late October:
Ukraine and Russia are in preliminary discussions about halting strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure, according to people familiar with the matter.Kyiv was seeking to resume Qatar-mediated negotiations that came close to agreement in August before being derailed by Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk, said the people, who included senior Ukrainian officials.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this month that a deal to protect energy facilities could signal a Russian willingness to engage in broader peace talks.
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Both Kyiv and Moscow have previously accepted that stopping attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and Russia’s oil refining capacity was in their mutual interest.
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Ukraine nevertheless plans to keep striking targets, including oil refineries, to pressure Russia into the talks, according to the senior Ukrainian official.
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Four Ukrainian officials told the Financial Times that Kyiv and Moscow had come to a “tacit agreement” last autumn to not strike each other’s energy facilities.As a result, Russia that winter refrained from the type of large-scale attacks it had conducted on Ukraine’s power infrastructure in 2022-23, according to two Ukrainian officials and a person in Washington with knowledge of the situation.
That agreement was meant to pave the way towards a formal deal, the people said.
However, Kyiv restarted drone attacks on Russia’s oil facilities in February and March this year, as it sought to increase pressure on Moscow after its failed 2023 counteroffensive.
Ukraine did not honor the 'truce' agreement that was in place during the 2023/24 winter. It blew up the August 2024 agreement mediated by Qatar by attacking Russia's Kursk region. The negotiations in October went nowhere as Ukraine insisted to continue its (already failing) Kursk campaign.
At the beginning of this year Ukraine stopped all gas transit from Russia to Slovakia and Austria. Russia countered by striking Ukrainian gas production facilities which it had previously left unharmed (machine translation):
Ukraine lost 40% of its gas production after Russian missile strikes. This is reported by Reuters with reference to sources.Because of this, Kiev plans to import up to 800 million cubic meters of gas from Europe in February and March.
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After a full-scale invasion in 2022 Russia has already launched numerous missile and drone attacks on Ukraine's electricity sector, but in recent weeks it has stepped up attacks on gas fields.
As Ukraine has already broken several 'truce' agreements about attacks on infrastructure it is doubtful that Russia will agree to another one.
While Zelenski, with his tweet is trying to make nice with Trump he fails to issue an apology for his behavior in the Oval Office. To him this was only 'regrettable':
Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.
Zelenski agrees to the 'mineral deal' but inserts language that implies the agreement is a step towards 'security guarantees' which Trump had rejected explicitly:
Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.
The White House is likely to reject Zelenski's attempt to make nice with Trump. It will want to 'cook' him a bit longer.
If only to demonstrate to Europeans and other recalcitrant figures that any resistance to Trump is futile.
Posted by b on March 4, 2025 at 17:51 UTC | Permalink