Russia’s Ministry of Defense is attempting to portray Ukraine as guilty of violating the terms of a ceasefire that was never agreed upon — let alone signed. The supposed ceasefire was a topic of discussion during a March 18 phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, but no formal agreement was reached, no terms were finalized, and no measures were enacted. Despite this, the Russian Ministry of Defense has already claimed that Ukraine has broken the supposed agreement.
Russia’s Defense Ministry insists that Ukraine is undermining the U.S. president’s initiatives, citing an attack by Ukrainian drones on an oil terminal in the Krasnodar Region as evidence.
“On the night of March 19, just hours after the conclusion of high-level Russian-American negotiations, including President Putin’s decision — made at the suggestion of the U.S. president — to temporarily halt strikes on energy infrastructure, the Kyiv regime deliberately launched a drone attack on an energy facility in the Krasnodar Region. This was yet another provocation orchestrated by the Kyiv regime, aimed at sabotaging the peace initiatives of the U.S. president,” the Russian ministry stated.
According to the Kremlin, on March 18, Putin “immediately ordered” Russian forces to comply with his “positive response” to Trump’s proposal for a temporary ceasefire. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that at that moment, seven Russian drones were poised to strike Ukrainian energy facilities linked to the defense industry in the Mykolaiv Region. Following Putin’s order, these drones were supposedly “neutralized” — six were said by Moscow to have been shot down by Russian Pantsir air defense systems, while the seventh was said by Moscow to have been destroyed by a Russian fighter jet.
However, Ukrainian authorities reported that between March 18 and 19, Russian forces carried out a series of drone and missile strikes, firing a total of 145 drones, two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and four S-300 surface-to-air missiles. President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Russian drones had struck a hospital in the Sumy Region and several unnamed locations in the Donetsk Region.
The terms of the temporary ceasefire were never formally agreed upon, as public statements confirm. On March 18, Trump told the Washington Examiner that after his conversation with Putin, Russia had agreed to “an immediate ceasefire on energy and infrastructure.” However, later that day, U.S. Special Representative for the Middle East Steve Witkoff clarified that the ceasefire applied only to “energy and infrastructure in general.” On March 19, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov further narrowed the scope, stating that the temporary ceasefire only concerned “energy infrastructure facilities.”
Russian claims that Moscow is abiding by the ceasefire while Kyiv is violating do not correspond to objective reality on the ground, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) argues.
“Putin's attempt to confuse and manipulate the temporary strikes ceasefire and blame Ukraine for violations even before the agreement has come into effect is an indicator of how Putin will likely exploit any future agreements,” the ISW concluded.