Egypt Daily News – Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I have dealt very well with both (Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky), and I believe we are beginning to see the outlines of an agreement. I hope that is the case.”
The U.S. president indicated that a full ceasefire could be achieved in the near future, stating: “I think we will achieve a complete ceasefire very soon, and then we will reach an agreement,” noting that a ceasefire had already been established in some areas of the front.
On March 18, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held a phone conversation that lasted about two hours. Among other topics, the Russian president responded positively to the idea of a mutual halt in strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days and issued instructions to the armed forces accordingly.
Later, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine would support this proposal. However, just hours after the talks between the Russian and U.S. leaders, the Kyiv government carried out an attack using three drones on the “Kavkazskaya” oil pumping station in Russia’s Krasnodar region, which transfers oil from railway tanks to the pipeline system of the international Caspian Pipeline Consortium.
The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that such actions by the Ukrainian leadership were a deliberate attempt to undermine Trump’s peace initiatives.
According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, this attack is the strongest evidence of Kyiv’s inability to negotiate. In response, the Russian military halted all strikes following Putin’s order, even going so far as to shoot down seven of its own drones that were en route to attack targets in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region.
