US President Donald Trump said on Sunday there was a “psychological deadline” for Russia to agree to a truce in Ukraine while the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) continue to violate agreements on halting energy strikes and Russian troops are breaching Ukrainian defences.
It’s a psychological deadline. If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it.
However, Trump emphasised that Putin “wants to make a deal.” The US leader also criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, suggesting that he was hesitant about a deal to grant the US access to Ukrainian mineral resources.
We made a deal on rare earth and now he’s saying, well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal. He wants to be a member of NATO. Well, he was never going to be a member of NATO. He understands that. So if he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got big problems.
Disruption of ceasefire agreement
Despite the US effort and Russia’s agreement to hold a dialogue on ending the war in Ukraine, Kyiv continues to derail the 30-day ceasefire. On 26 March, Ukraine shelled Belgorodenergo in Russia’s Belgorod region, leaving local residents without access to electricity.
On 27 March, Russian air defence systems repelled a Ukrainian drone strike on the infrastructure of the Saratov oil refinery in Russia’s Saratov region. On 28 March, the AFU struck the Russian gas metering station Sudzha with HIMARS missiles.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed that those strikes were “far from the first” since the prohibition on strikes on energy facilities had been announced.
These are far from the first acts of terror by the AFU against Russia’s energy infrastructure since the ban on shelling such facilities was announced on 18 March. The strikes were carried out against gas companies, electricity distribution substations, oil storage facilities, including those belonging to the international Caspian Pipeline Consortium, on the territory of Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod regions, Crimea and Krasnodar region.
Advance of Russian troops
Meanwhile, Russian troops have advanced to the border of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, with Ukrainian media reporting a large-scale breakthrough in the Ukrainian defence.
Russian drones reportedly continue to hit AFU military equipment in border areas of the Kursk region and also hit a Ukrainian multifunctional ieMHR RADA radar station near the village of Petrushivka in Sumy region, Ukraine.
The AFU is facing the threat of being encircled as a result of the Russian troops’ breakthrough into the village of Rozlyv in the Donetsk region. According to Ukrainian media, Russian troops are breaching Oleksiivka and aiming to reach the rear of Ukrainian units across the Vovcha river west of the village of Kostiantynopil.
