Russia-Ukraine conflict: A fragile 30-day ceasefire deal?

Moscow: Just about 72 hours after reaching an agreement with the United States to halt attacks on energy infrastructure in both Russia and Ukraine for 30 days starting March 18, 2025, Moscow today accused Kyiv of persisting in its assaults on Russian energy facilities.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated that on March 25-26, 2025, Ukrainian drones targeted energy installations in the Bryansk and Kursk regions, and an attempt to hit a gas storage site in Crimea was thwarted. This occurred despite Ukrainian President V.A. Zelenskyy’s public endorsement of the Russian-American accords established in Riyadh on March 24, 2025, which aimed to cease attacks on civilian energy infrastructure. 

Zakharova emphasized that these incidents further demonstrate the futility of negotiating with the Kyiv government. “The attacks prove once again that it is impossible to strike a deal with the Kyiv regime,” she added.

Concerning the  “Black Sea initiatives” (safe shipping, agricultural exports) that were discussed in Riyadh, Russia said this will be a new agreement and its outlines were currently being discussed. Zakharov made it clear that Russia was in contact with the American delegation, “because V.A. Zelenskyy himself forbade negotiations with our country”. Replying to a question on how legitimate Zelenskyy was for concluding any agreements, since now the US is acting as a mediator and discussing the conditions separately with Russia and Ukraine, Zakharova replied, ” There is no trust in the representatives of the Kyiv regime. What kind of trust can there be if they distort everything on the fly?”

Also read: Trump succeeds in pausing hostilities in the Black Sea

Addressing this topic, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that it was not about trust or faith in something and the hope that “they will not deceive us there,” but about firm guarantees that Russia will consider as such.

“Do not think that we have changed or will change our position. The question is with whom and how the work is being carried out… These are the questions that still need to be resolved,” Zakharova said.

Besides, Russia today accused London and Paris of continuing to “hatch plans” for military intervention in Ukraine, disguising it as a “peacekeeping” mission.

Zakharova mentioned that on March 21, 2025, in Northwood, at the initiative of British Prime Minister K. Starmer, a meeting of the chiefs of the general staff of the armed forces of about 30 countries of the “so-called coalition of the willing” was held in a hybrid format, ready to send their soldiers to Ukraine. 

“The discussion of the topic will continue today (March 27, 2025) in Paris, also at the level of leaders. We would like to draw your attention once again to the fact that we are categorically against such a scenario, which is fraught with a direct clash between Russia and NATO,” she said. She further expressed Russia’s concerns over the reports about the possible construction of the second military base on the island of Mayotte. She said Moscow perceived it as a “relapse of Paris’s neocolonial instincts, a clear demonstration of its unwillingness to respect the territorial integrity of the Union of the Comoros Islands, and its selective approach to UN General Assembly resolutions”.

Zakharova also accused the Zelenskyy regime of the murder of Russian journalists. “The Kyiv terrorist regime is killing journalists everywhere. Whether they are on the front lines or working in the rear, neo-Nazis are killing journalists because they are telling the truth,” she said.

In the last few days alone, she recounted that four media representatives were killed and three, not counting other civilians, were seriously injured as a result of targeted attacks, including with long-range precision weapons. Offering details she said that on March 24, 2025,  on the territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic (The LPR, which was proclaimed by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022), after a targeted artillery strike by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the correspondent of the Izvestia Information Center A.S. Fedorchak, the cameraman of the Zvezda TV channel A.A. Panov and the driver of the film crew A. Sirkeli were killed—the war correspondent of Zvezda N.M. Goldin, who was with the dead, miraculously survived after receiving serious shrapnel wounds. On the same day, while carrying out an editorial assignment in the Sudzhansky district of the Kursk region, Ukr-Banderites wounded TASS journalist M.A. Skuratov.

“Already on March 26 of this year, in the Belgorod region, the car of the Channel One film crew blew up on a mine planted by militants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As a result of the terrorist attack, the life of the young talented journalist A.A. Prokofieva was cut short, and cameraman D.V. Volkov was seriously injured, and doctors are now fighting for his life,” Zakharova said.

She added, “We have repeatedly been forced to comment on the terrorist tactics of the Kiev regime against Russian media, war correspondents, and representatives of the media sphere in general. We have stated that neo-Nazis have unleashed a real hunt for employees of Russian media located in or near the zone of a special military operation”.

She claimed that Bankova (Bankova Street in Kyiv, Ukraine, where the Presidential Administration of Ukraine is located) was trying to give these “bloody crimes maximum resonance in an attempt to prove to its sponsors and its population that supposedly, not all is lost”.

Accusing the Kyiv regime of violating norms of international law, she criticised the specialized international structures such as UNESCO and its Director General O. Azoulay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, other multilateral institutions, and the “countless” human rights NGOs, for their silence and inaction.

“It is surprising that even the United Nations, with its headquarters in New York, said yesterday that it has no special mandate to conduct investigations. No mandate. So, how do you conduct investigations without a mandate in all the other cases when you find words to accuse our country? Remember then that you have no mandate,” she said. She added: “The second point. In order to determine that the Kiev regime is happy about the murder of Russian journalists, you don’t need a mandate. You just need to read their direct speech and draw the appropriate conclusions, for which you also don’t need a mandate, since this is contained in the resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council – the inadmissibility of killing peaceful citizens, civilians, including journalists. Our delegations, our permanent missions to the United Nations in New York, Geneva and UNESCO in Paris will seek full comments and statements from authorized persons in these structures regarding the bloody murder of Russian journalists by the Kiev regime.”