Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations of breaking a United States-brokered deal against attacks in the Black Sea a day after it was announced.
The Ukrainian air force said on Wednesday that 117 drones were launched from Russia during an overnight attack. At least 56 of the drones were downed, 48 were lost due to electronic warfare and no damage was caused, the air force said.
However, the mayor of Mykolaiv said there were power outages due to the drones.
In the city of Kryvyi Rih, the Russian attack caused fires and damaged buildings, but no casualties were reported. Buildings were also reportedly damaged in the border region of Sumy, which has come under heavy attack in recent days.
The head of the military administration in Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandr Vilkul, described the attack as the most significant drone attack on the city, adding, “Apparently, this is how the occupiers ‘want peace’”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the overnight barrage of attacks and said it was a “clear signal to the whole world that Moscow is not going to pursue real peace”.
“Since March 11, there has been a US proposal for a total ceasefire, a complete halt to strikes. And literally every night, through its attacks, Russia keeps saying ‘no’ to our partners’ peace proposal,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
Last night, there were another 117 proofs in our skies of how Russia continues to drag out this war – 117 strike drones, most of them Shaheds. A significant number were shot down by our air defenders.
Dnipro, Sumy, Cherkasy, and other regions came under Russian attack. There… pic.twitter.com/q4WTj87IHG
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 26, 2025
Zelenskyy will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday before a gathering of world leaders on Thursday that has been billed as a “coalition of the willing”, which plans to set out security guarantees for Ukraine in any peace deal.
The Russian Ministry of Defence for its part said Ukraine carried out a drone attack on a gas storage facility on the Crimean Peninsula and a power installation in the Bryansk region, which sits on the border with Ukraine and its Sumy region.
“The Kyiv regime, while continuing to damage Russia’s civilian energy infrastructure, is actually doing everything it can to disrupt the Russian-American agreements,” it wrote.
Ukraine denied that it had targeted Russian energy infrastructure in the two regions.
In the meantime, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned in Warsaw on Wednesday that the Western defence alliance would respond with a “devastating” blow to any attack by Russia on Poland or another ally.
Accusations make negotiations ‘difficult’
Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said further negotiations will be “difficult” as both sides continue to accuse each other of violating the temporary truce.
“Accusations back and forth illustrate how difficult and fragile the situation is between both sides in this conflict and how difficult the task the American officials have ahead of them,” Jabbari explained.
Temporary truce
On Tuesday, the US reached separate truce agreements with Ukraine and Russia in talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. US negotiators met separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, both of which agreed to cease their attacks at sea.
The US also agreed to push for lifting some Western sanctions on Russian food, fertiliser and shipping in the Black Sea.
Earlier, the Kremlin said “a number of conditions” must be met before the Black Sea deal can be implemented, including restoring links between some Russian banks and the international financial system.
However, a spokesperson for the European Union said on Wednesday that one of the main conditions to lift or amend Russian sanctions would be “the end of the Russian unprovoked and unjustified aggression in Ukraine and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian military forces”.
Earlier, a court in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don convicted 23 Ukrainians on “terrorism” charges in a trial that Kyiv denounced as a sham and a violation of international law.
The defendants include 12 captured members of Ukraine’s elite Azov Brigade, which led the defence of the city of Mariupol in the early months of Russia’s war.
