Russia is close to withdrawing from the 30-day ceasefire deal struck last week, accusing Ukraine of breaking the agreement, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a radio interview with Ria Novosti on March 29.

The Kremlin spokesman said that Ukraine is allegedly constantly violating the conditions, and Russians will withdraw if it continues. Kyiv has likewise accused the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) of continually targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure despite a commitment from Russian President Vladimir Putin to end strikes during a 1.5-hour phone call with Trump a week ago.

“Russia reserves the right not to implement the moratorium on energy sector attacks, which is constantly violated by Kyiv,” Peskov said in answer to a journalist's question.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that the Ukrainian military had carried out five strikes on the energy facilities in Russia's borderline Belgorod Region.

Amongst the objects hit were: A high-voltage power line was damaged in an attack by an unmanned aerial vehicle; A power converter sustained major damage in a drone attack; Over 1,100 domestic consumers lost power in the Grayvoronsky District; A Ukrainian drone attack on a high-voltage power line cut off electricity to more than 8,000 domestic consumers in the Borisovsky District, TASS reports.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) made similar claims of strikes against Ukrainian energy assets on the same day, as well as a major drone strike against Dnipro that killed four and injured 19 people. The attack sparked a major fire in a hotel and restaurant complex. Serhiy Lysak, governor of the surrounding Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram that a high-rise apartment building and nearly 10 private homes had caught fire. Firefighting crews had subsequently brought the blaze in the hotel complex under control, Reuters reported. 

No ceasefire deal this year

After a good beginning where Putin seemed to agree to both a limited 30-day standstill in attacks on energy facilities and more recently a new Black Sea grain deal on March 25, the ceasefire talks that kicked off in Riyadh on February 18 now seem to be going off track.

The problem is that Putin has given little away to Ukraine in the talks and is adding conditions to each agreement that are impossible to meet. Russia agreed to the Black Sea deal, but the Kremlin read out from the meeting included a list of five conditions and said the ceasefire would not start unless those conditions were met, one of which was for the US to remove financial sanctions on the Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank). Trump appeared to agree, but Washington’s read out only said the US would “help” with Russia’s payments process for the grain business.

As bne IntelliNews reported, the US only is able to provide sanctions relief unilaterally; the SWIFT messaging service that is the centre of the sanctions is based in Belgium and under EU law. European leaders were adamant at a Paris meeting last week that Brussels would not take any sanctions off Russia until the AFR had quit Ukrainian territory entirely. Trump is making promises to Putin he can’t keep, a fact partially admitted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in comments at the weekend.

"It’s a host of sanctions, including sanctions that are not American.. so we couldn’t lift them if we wanted to. We’re going to sort of analyse what our team came back [from consultations in Riyadh] with. We’ll present those options to the [US] President. The President will make those decisions. We’re not there yet,” Rubio said.

Russian negotiator Grigory Karasin, who led the negotiations last week in Riyadh, was even more downbeat, saying on March 27 that the talks between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia had failed to make significant progress and negotiations might drag into next year, The Moscow Times reported.

The 12-hour discussions in Riyadh, where the nitty gritty horse trading began on March 24, “haven’t led to any radical breakthrough yet, but the opportunities are there,” Karasin told the state-run broadcaster Rossiya 24. “It would have been naive to expect any breakthroughs,” said Karasin, a former diplomat and current senator in the upper-house Federation Council.

US negotiators, including senior National Security Council director Andrew Peek and State Department policy planning chief Michael Anton, initially presented “proposals that are unacceptable to Russia,” Karasin claimed.

“But then, in my opinion… they realised that a team of civilised, reasoned interlocutors was sitting in front of them,” he said, describing the talks as having a “good atmosphere” despite the lack of progress.

Karasin said he expects US-Russian negotiations on Ukraine to continue at least until the end of 2025 or beyond. The next meeting has been provisionally scheduled for sometime in April.

Analysts say that Putin is probing Trump to see how much he can get from the White House in concessions and is willing to continue the war if the talks fail. Putin said the Russian military was close to “finishing off” Ukrainian forces last week and suggested placing Ukraine under a UN-backed “temporary administration” before signing any peace deal – a proposal that was immediately rejected by the EU.

No to minerals deal

The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said that after a press conference between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Trump had descended into a shouting match on February 28, relations between the White House and Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) were “back on track” at the end of last week, but the revival was short-lived and killed by a fourth draft of the mooted minerals deal on March 28 that is even harsher than the previous three. Zelenskiy announced the same day that Kyiv would reject the latest version too, which would threaten Ukraine’s EU accession bid due to the extremity of its terms. In essence, the draft demands that Ukraine sign over the rights to all its natural resources – both publicly and privately owned – and gives the US total control of awarding concessions as well as siphoning all revenues from the sector off into a wealth fund under the sole control of the US.

"The Constitution of Ukraine clearly states that our course is towards the EU … There are very important reforms and corresponding steps," Zelenskiy told a press conference in Kyiv. "Nothing that could endanger … Ukraine’s accession to the EU can be accepted.”

The proposed deal from Washington included "many new provisions that were not previously discussed," as well as "some aspects that had already been rejected by both sides," according to Ukrainian media.

The new deal also gives the US the right to withdraw money from the fund to compensate the US for money it has spent on the Ukraine conflict, without specifying an amount. Previously, Trump has claimed the US spent $350bn and said he intends to recoup $500bn; however, the actual amount authorised by Congress was $184bn, of which slightly less than $100bn was actually transferred. Ukraine press reported the amount the US is now seeking to recover is closer to $120bn.

Zelenskiy has also rejected the whole idea of the US recovering money it sent to Kyiv over the last three years, as this assumes it was some kind of loan. Most of the money the US committed to Ukraine under former US President Joe Biden was in the form of grants, not loans, which do not need to be repaid.

Ukraine does not recognise US military aid as loans, Zelenskiy said at the same press conference, adding Ukraine will not consider the provided military aid as a loan. “We are grateful for the support, but this is not a credit, and we will not allow it,” he added.

Trump switching to Iran deal

The danger Zelenskiy has always faced is that the mercurial Trump would lose interest in the Ukraine conflict and withdraw completely from the ceasefire process and push the whole problem off onto Europe.

And indeed, Trump seems to be losing interest already after saying he wants a quick solution before Easter if possible.

Trump’s attention already seems to be turning to Iran, where similar negotiations have been going on in parallel, albeit moving more slowly.

The White House sent a letter to the supreme leader in Tehran setting out six conditions for Iran sanctions talks to resume, it was reported on March 21. Tehran has said it will not enter into direct talks with Washington, but has agreed to indirect talks via the Sultan of Oman, who has good relations with both sides. Also as bne IntelliNews reported, Trump is hoping to use Putin as an intermediary in negotiations.

Tensions are starting to ratchet up, as in the last few days satellite images reveal the US has sent B-2 bombers, as well as transport and refuelling planes, to bases in the Indian Ocean to maintain the attacks on the Houthi in Yemen but which could also strike Iran.

Trump has explicitly threatened Tehran, saying that the theocracy needs to respond to his demands or the consequences would be “very, very bad.”

Sky News reported that at least five B-2 stealth bombers have arrived at the remote Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, a British protectorate, with additional bombers en route. The B-2 Spirit is a strategic stealth bomber designed to penetrate advanced air defence systems and conduct precision strikes on high-value targets using a massive ordnance penetrator (MOP), a 30,000-pound bomb designed to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. The US has a military base on the island which has been used to launch strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past.

The build-up of B-2 bombers at Diego Garcia is part of broader regional military reinforcements. US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth extended the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Middle East and ordered the USS Carl Vinson and its strike group to join regional operations.