Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky accuses Moscow of ‘manipulation’ over Kremlin demands on Black Sea truce
Kyiv and Moscow appear to issue contradictory statements over timing of Black Sea ceasefire after days of intense talks in Saudi Arabia
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “manipulation” over a Black Sea ceasefire agreed during talks in Saudi Arabia, after the Kremlin insisted it would only come into force once certain conditions were met.
Following three days of parallel US-led talks in Riyadh, the White House said on Tuesday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a ceasefire in the Black Sea, with Mr Zelensky saying the truce was effective immediately.
But the Kremlin appeared to contradict this, saying the deal would only come into force after a series of conditions were met – including the lifting of restrictions and sanctions on a major agricultural bank, exporters of food and fertiliser and on Russian vessels.
In his nightly address, Mr Zelensky later said: “Unfortunately, even now, even today, on the very day of negotiations, we see how the Russians have already begun to manipulate.
“They are already trying to distort agreements and, in fact, deceive both our intermediaries and the entire world.”
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Inside Story | What it’s really like to be on Putin’s kill list and hunted down by his murderous thugs
In an Independent Premium piece, James Jones writes:
When you imagine receiving the news that you’re on the kill list of one of the world’s cruellest dictators, you perhaps don’t imagine it while holding a glass of champagne. But, in January 2023, that’s exactly – or, almost exactly – what happened to Christo Grozev, an internationally renowned investigative journalist whom I had been filming for a documentary about his work for months, and who told me at a glitzy awards ceremony in New York that Vladimir Putin wanted him dead.
The Bulgarian-born journalist had long been rustling feathers at the Kremlin – his exceptional work for Bellingcat (a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that Grozev headed up from 2015) exposed Putin’s killing network of spies and assassins.
Known as a “modern-day Sherlock”, he also unmasked the perpetrators involved in poisoning opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, winning him global accolades. Still, neither of us quite expected that, while the rest of the room waited for their wine to be topped up, the grim reality of the situation would be revealed. He simply said, “I can’t go home.” The message said that intelligence had revealed there could be a “red team” waiting for him at home in Vienna, Austria. Now, the hunter had become the hunted.
By the time Grozev became one of Putin’s most wanted, I’d been following him around with a camera for more than a year. We were working on a documentary – Kill List: Hunted by Putin’s Spies – which started out as a story about Bellingcat.
They were unparalleled in their work using open source investigation to identify, track and expose assassins and spies working for the dictator across Europe. Over the three years we were filming, the doc went far beyond that brief. Rather than explaining the poison programme itself, the narrative changed. What we answered was what you risk when you speak out against the regime – the threats, the fear and the very human cost of putting yourself on the line to expose the truth.
We’d taken pretty extreme security measures from the very beginning ... I half convinced myself that we were being over the top; that no one really cared about what we were doing. You feel like you’re acting in a spy movie. And then police arrested part of a Bulgarian spy ring living in the UK. And then it all became real.
What it’s really like to be on Putin’s kill list
Watch: Russia doesn't want to occupy Ukraine, US special envoy tells Tucker Carlson
US making a lot of progress, Trump claims
“We are making a lot of progress,” Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday, as talks concluded in Saudi Arabia.
“There's a lot of hatred, as you can probably tell, and it allows for people to get together, mediated, arbitrated, and see if we can get it stopped. And I think it will work.”
Former Russian minister ‘shocked’ to learn he was subject to sanctions in UK
A former Russian minister told police he was shocked to learn he was subject to sanctions in the UK, a court has heard.
Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, 48, the former mayor of Sevastopol in illegally annexed Crimea, is facing seven counts of circumventing sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024.
He is said to have deliberately avoided sanctions by opening a Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) account on or before February 2023 and having tens of thousands of pounds transferred to it by his wife, Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, 47.
Body-worn footage played to the jury showed National Crime Agency (NCA) officers arresting Ovsiannikov in a residential street on January 22 2024 on suspicion of breaching UK financial sanctions.
During an interview he answered no comment, before telling officers that he “hoped no one knew that he had left Russia and he had spent a number of years” making it possible to leave, prosecutor Lyndon Harris summarised at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday.
Pol Allingham has more details in this report:
Former Russian minister ‘shocked’ to learn he was subject to sanctions in UK
Trump administration ‘appears to view Europe fundamentally as an adversary’
There is a real sense that the Trump administration “views Europe fundamentally as an adversary”, a former State Department official has said, after top officials close to the US president were revealed to have publicly lambasted European allies.
“There's a real sense of divorce, that America is not just disinterested in the trans-Atlantic alliance but views Europe fundamentally as an adversary,” Max Bergmann, who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Associated Press.
His remarks came in the wake of an extraordinary security breach, in which the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently added to a chat on messaging app Signal which showed US vice president JD Vance privately complaining about “bailing out” Europe – while Donald Trump’s defence Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed “pathetic” European “freeloading” – as they discussed top-secret plans to bomb Yemen.
Zelensky condemns weakening of sanctions against Russia
While the White House said in a joint statement with Russia that it would help Moscow restore its access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had not agreed to put that in its statement with Washington.
“We believe that this is a weakening of position and sanctions,” he said.
No concrete plans for further contacts between US and Moscow, Kremlin says
A Kremlin official has said that the talks between US and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made.
Full report: Royal Navy shadows three Russian ships through English Channel
The Royal Navy has shadowed three Russian ships through the English Channel.
British minehunter HMS Cattistock and a Wildcat helicopter were deployed on Wednesday to escort Russia’s Admiral Vladimirskiy as it travelled along the UK’s south coast.
This operation was followed rapidly by another, as HMS Somerset and tanker RFA Tidesurge were deployed to escort Russian landing ship RFN Alexander Otrakovsky and merchant vessel MV Ascalon through the Channel and North Sea.
Admiral Vladimirskiy – a Russian oceanographic survey ship – was accused in 2023 of involvement in an operation to map the UK’s critical undersea infrastructure, during which it allegedly sailed for a month with its transmitter turned off and loitered near UK wind farms.
Read more details in this report:
Royal Navy shadows three Russian ships through English Channel
US says it will help restore Russia's access to global agriculture and fertiliser markets
In an apparent reference to Russia’s demands, the White House statement on the talks with Russia said that the US “will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions”.
Russia has appeared to demand that such conditions must be met before the Black Sea ceasefire can begin.
Russia and Ukraine agree to suspend strikes on energy facilities, Kremlin says
Oil refineries, oil and gas pipelines, and nuclear stations are among the targets that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to temporarily suspend strikes on, the Kremlin has said.
The list also includes fuel storage facilities, pumping stations, electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, such as power plants, substations, transformers, distributors, and hydroelectric dams.
According to the statement, the temporary moratorium on strikes on energy infrastructure starts from 18 March and is valid for 30 days, but it could be extended by mutual agreement. If the agreement is breached by one party, the other party is also released from compliance, the Kremlin added.
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