Ukraine faced grim military and diplomatic developments over the past week, as Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a complete ceasefire by suggesting there were “issues” that needed ironing out.
Vladyslav Voloshyn, a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern forces, said Russian forces were increasing their mechanised attacks as spring weather firmed up soggy ground.
“The mud has disappeared … there is more vegetation, and there is less visibility. Therefore, the enemy is trying to improve its tactical position,” said Voloshyn.
Russian forces on Tuesday entered the village of Stepove in western Zaporizhia, a southern Ukrainian province Russian forces partly occupy.
The capture would complicate local Ukrainian logistics, said a Russian official.
“There is a road running from Orekhov to Kamenskoye through Stepove, which the enemy constantly used … They will have to move along longer routes. This brings about positive changes for us on the Zaporizhia front as a whole,” Vladimir Rogov told the Russian state news agency TASS.
There was also bad news for Ukrainian forces in the Russian province of Kursk, where they staged a counter-invasion last August, drawing much of Russia’s firepower away from Ukrainian soil.
Russia recaptured its city of Sudzha on March 13, pushing Ukrainian forces almost to the border, and appeared intent on pressing into Ukrainian territory.
“Not only will we have liberated our own land, but we will also establish the buffer zone that [Putin] has tasked us with creating,” Apty Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces unit, told Rossiya-1 television network.
Putin called for the creation of a “sanitary zone” inside Ukraine a year ago.
“It is crucial that this zone be no less than 20 kilometres wide [10 miles], and preferably 30 kilometres [20 miles], extending deep into Ukrainian territory,” a battalion deputy commander, Oleg Ivanov, told state news service TASS.
Putin seeks selective ceasefire
Buoyed by these successes, Putin rejected a United States-Ukrainian proposal for a complete ceasefire on the day Sudzha fell to him.
“Who will determine where and who has violated a potential ceasefire agreement along 2,000km [1,240 miles]? And who will then blame who for violating that agreement?” Putin said, referring to the length of the entire Russian-Ukrainian border.
“The situation on the ground … is rapidly changing,” he told reporters.
Putin also claimed Ukrainian forces in Kursk were encircled.
Ukraine’s general staff denied the claim, saying, “Reports of the alleged ‘encirclement’ … are false and fabricated by the Russians for political manipulation and to exert pressure on Ukraine and its partners.”
That did not stop US President Donald Trump from believing them.
“[Russians] have encircled about 2,500 soldiers, they’re nicely encircled,” Trump said in a televised interview.
There was no subsequent indication they had been captured.
Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, told reporters on Tuesday that instead of a full ceasefire, Putin agreed to a ceasefire on long-range aerial attacks against power stations and general infrastructure, as well as long-range naval attacks in the Black Sea.
The agreement was sealed after two meetings between Witkoff and Putin lasting almost eight hours, followed by a two-hour phone call between Putin and Trump.
“Up until recently, we really didn’t have consensus around these two aspects, the energy and infrastructure ceasefire and the Black Sea moratorium on firing. And today, we got to that place, and I think it’s a relatively short distance to a full ceasefire from there,” Witkoff said.
The Kremlin’s version of events suggested a Black Sea moratorium was still not there.
Putin “reacted constructively” to the idea, a Kremlin press statement said, and “agreed to start negotiations to further study the specific details”, whereas on energy and general infrastructure, Putin “immediately gave the Russian military the appropriate command”.
Witkoff said details remained to be worked out on Sunday when US and Russian delegations were to meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would consider the partial ceasefire after speaking with Trump, “so that we could understand the details”, he was quoted as saying by Ukrainian news portal, Obshchestvennoye Novosti on March 19.
But the deal between Trump and Putin puts him in a difficult position.
The full ceasefire would have stopped a slow but relentless yearlong Russian advance, while a simultaneous long-range ceasefire would have protected Russian energy infrastructure and the Russian Black Sea fleet from attacks by Ukrainian unmanned vehicles, which have been highly successful.
On Wednesday, for example, Ukrainian-made drones struck a refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region. Last Friday, they destroyed four Pantsir-1 surface-to-air missile systems on Russian soil; while the day before, three drones reached Moscow.
Zelenskyy said a Ukrainian-made drone had passed the 3,000km (1,860-mile) test on Tuesday, suggesting Ukraine was aiming for ever-deeper strikes against weapons factories and refineries in enemy territory.
The absence of such symmetry in a partial ceasefire gives Ukraine no respite or retribution for ongoing Russian attacks on its soil.
The direct talks between Russia and the US have also frustrated Zelenskyy, who enjoyed unqualified support from former US President Joe Biden.
In a virtual meeting with NATO and European Union allies on Saturday, Zelenskyy expressed frustration that Trump was discussing European security guarantees with Putin.
“This is a very bad signal – taking the Russians’ opinion into account,” regarding a European-led peacekeeping force in Ukraine, he said. “It is not [Putin’s] business to decide anything about Ukraine’s and Europe’s security,” he said.
Putin, on the other hand, sounded bullish when addressing the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, whose leaders he told to get used to Western sanctions.
“Only those countries that can ensure real, full-scale sovereignty and remain resilient, both generally and to external pressures in particular, are capable of dynamic, progressive development in the interests of their peoples,” he said.
Any ceasefire would be designed to lead to negotiations for long-term peace, but neither Russia nor Ukraine have budged from their fundamental positions.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told an interviewer on Monday that Ukraine had to agree never to become part of NATO. Russia has also demanded that Ukraine withdraw from its four provinces that Russia has formally annexed and partly controls – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Ukraine would never recognise its occupied territories as Russian, said Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, days after being appointed to lead Ukraine’s negotiating team on Friday.
The EU, too, has taken a grim view of Putin’s intentions.
“Those conditions that they are presenting show that Russia doesn’t really want peace because they are presenting as conditions all the ultimate goals that they want to achieve from the war,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at the start of Monday’s meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said territorial concessions would be part of a deal, while NATO membership for Ukraine was “extremely unlikely”.
“We can talk about what’s right and wrong, and we can also talk about the reality of the situation on the ground,” said Waltz in an interview with ABC News on Sunday.
Granting Russia the territories it holds would cripple Ukraine’s future defence, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.
“The current front lines do not provide the strategic depth that Ukraine will need to reliably defend against renewed Russian aggression,” wrote the ISW.
“Russian forces are just across the Dnipro River from Kherson City, roughly 25 kilometres [15 miles] from Zaporizhzhia City, and 30 kilometres [20 miles] from Kharkiv City. Russian troops on the Dnipro River could use a ceasefire to prepare for the extremely difficult task of conducting an opposed river crossing undisturbed.”
It concluded, “Ukraine would likely need an even larger military with greater capabilities to play its critical role in deterring and, if necessary, defeating future aggression,” while “the US and Europe would likely need to provide military aid to Ukraine more rapidly, in much larger volumes, and at higher cost”.
There was some good news for Ukraine during the past week.
Germany’s Christian Democrats and Social Democrats passed a resolution in the Bundestag on Tuesday to create a 500bn euros ($546bn) fund for defence and infrastructure spending, overcoming a political tradition against high deficits.
It still has to pass the upper house of Parliament.
Germany on Monday announced a new weapons and ammunition package for Ukraine, which included missiles for the Iris-T.
Also on Monday, the European Council said Ukraine will soon receive approximately 3.5bn euros ($3.8bn) after the Council approved a third payment of non-repayable grants and loans to Kyiv under the Ukraine Facility, which supports reconstruction and modernisation.
