Russia may be ‘dragging feet’ on achieving peace in Ukraine, Trump says

By Angus Watson, Jessie Yeung, Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova, CNN

(CNN) — US President Donald Trump said he believes Russia wants to end its war with Ukraine, but suggested Moscow could be “dragging their feet” after the Kremlin disputed accounts of agreements made with the US.

“I think that Russia wants to see an end to it, but it could be they’re dragging their feet. I’ve done it over the years,” the president told the right-wing cable channel Newsmax in an interview that aired Tuesday night.

“I think Russia would like to see it end and I think (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr) Zelensky would like to see it end, at this point,” Trump said.

His comments came only hours after Russia said it would only implement a US-brokered deal to stop using force in the Black Sea once some of the sanctions imposed on its banks and exports over its invasion of Ukraine are lifted.

Following days of separate negotiations with Ukrainian and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, the White House said on Tuesday that the two sides had agreed “to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”

But while Zelensky confirmed in a news conference that Ukraine had agreed to stop using military force in the Black Sea, the Kremlin released its own statement on the talks, which included far-reaching conditions for signing up to the partial truce.

Those included lifting sanctions on its agricultural bank and other financial institutions and companies involved in exporting food and their re-connection to the SWIFT international payments system.

The US statements made no mention of the sanctions being lifted as a precondition to the ceasefire.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said his administration was looking at Russia’s conditions. “We’re thinking about all of them right now. There are five or six conditions. We are looking at all of them,” he said.

On Wednesday, Zelensky said sanctions against Russia needed to remain as it continues to occupy Ukrainian territory and that he expects the US to secure the Black Sea agreement without conditions.

“We expect the American side to secure the unconditionality of silence in the sea,” the Ukrainian president said alongside his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris on Wednesday evening.

His remarks came ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” – a group of Western nations that have pledged to help defend Ukraine against Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN Wednesday that Moscow does not believe Zelensky fully grasps the changed nature of US-Russia relations.

“I don’t think so,” Peskov said in a text message when asked about the Ukrainian leader’s comments that Moscow was trying to write additional conditions into the agreement.

Peskov also criticized Zelensky, saying he had “no doubt he remembers the previous Black Sea deal with all the details! … The one that was not implemented in the part of Russia.”

Peskov was referring to the Black Sea grain initiative, which was in place earlier in the war, was signed in July 2022 and renewed three times before Russia allowed it to lapse in July 2023, saying that its demands had not been met including the lifting of sanctions.

Meanwhile, Macron said Russia had shown a “desire for war” by putting conditions on the US-brokered deal. The French president added that Russia had offered “no solid answer” to the US-proposed 30-day ceasefire.

“Russia will not have a say on the support that we give and will give to Ukraine, nor will they dictate the conditions on this durable peace because it’s about the sovereignty of Ukraine and the security of all Europeans,” he added.

Macron continued, “I will not let history be rewritten by the lies of certain people, there is only one aggressor and there’s only one who resists. Russia is the aggressor, and you (Zelensky) are resisting.”

Overnight drone attack

The White House said that Russia and Ukraine also agreed to implement a previously announced pause on attacks against energy infrastructure.

But details of that agreement have also remained opaque. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said that Russia stopped targeting energy infrastructure from March 18, when Trump and Putin held a phone call in which they discussed the proposal.

However, Ukraine has accused Moscow of continuing to attack its infrastructure in the past week, with an aide to Zelensky saying there had been at least eight strikes.

At the same time, Russia accused Kyiv of attacking its own facilities, including an oil pumping station in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar.

Further indications that a meaningful truce was long way off came overnight when Russia launched over 100 drones towards Ukraine, after three Ukrainian civilians were killed on Tuesday, including a three-year old girl and her mother, Kyiv said.

Zelensky said the attacks, which targeted multiple regions of Ukraine showed Russia was not interested in a ceasefire.

“Launching such large-scale attacks after ceasefire negotiations is a clear signal to the whole world that Moscow is not going to pursue real peace,” the Ukrainian leader said on X on Wednesday morning.

Black Sea ceasefire could impact Ukraine

Ukrainian and US officials have said the deal to halt strikes in the Black Sea would be a potentially significant step forward, despite it falling short of the 30-day full ceasefire initially proposed by the White House.

But some analysts have pointed out that a ceasefire in the Black Sea and a pause on strikes against energy infrastructure could be disadvantageous to Ukraine.

Some of Ukraine’s biggest military wins have taken place in the Black Sea – it repeatedly successfully struck the Russian fleet and the Kerch Bridge that links Russia with Crimea.

The sinking of the Moskva, one of the Russian Navy’s most important warships, gave a massive boost to Ukraine’s morale and remains among the most significant moments of the war – even though the two sides disagree on why it happened, with Ukraine saying it went down after being hit by a missile and Russia claiming it sunk because of a fire and a subsequent ammunition explosion.

Similarly, Ukraine’s ability to strike against oil depots and other energy facilities deep inside Russian territory have caused major headaches for Moscow, which has long relied on energy exports revenues to fund its war effort.

“The United States should amplify and accelerate not constrain these effective asymmetric warfare approaches (by Ukraine) that also impact Russia’s battlefield operations and force Putin to make hard choices about resource allocation,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said in their daily note on Wednesday.

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CNN’s Svitlana Vlasova, Daria Tarasova-Markina, Hira Humayun, Joseph Ataman and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, Frederik Pleitgen contributed reporting.