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KYIV — There’s a life-and-death blame game going on between Kyiv and Moscow as each side tries to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump that the other is responsible for any failure of his desire to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine.
They are pointing fingers over violations of the shaky partial ceasefire covering energy infrastructure and the Black Sea in hopes of directing Trump’s resulting wrath at their enemy.
“I clearly showed that we are ready to cease fire. But you will see now that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is not ready,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told international journalists in Kyiv this week. “And I would really like that now, when Putin refused to stop the fire, President Trump would put strong pressure on him with sanctions, not remove them.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, accused the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv of a “campaign of terror against Russian civilians and energy infrastructure.”
“It is all a spectacle around Donald Trump’s idea of peace process, where Ukraine’s goal is to show we’re not a spoiler of the process,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies.
But there’s a big problem with Kyiv’s strategy: Trump might not actually care.
Trump has not asked Congress for any additional military aid for Ukraine. What’s now arriving was still requested by former President Joe Biden. The most substantial help is U.S. intelligence sharing, which Zelenskyy said is crucial to warn Ukraine of incoming Russian missiles, but which Trump temporarily froze to put pressure on Ukraine.
Rather than support Kyiv, Trump is exploiting Ukraine’s vulnerability. The U.S. has proposed a new minerals deal with Ukraine, reported by the Financial Times. The new deal features no security guarantees and no further financial aid for Ukraine, but would give the U.S. control over all natural resources of Ukraine to extract vast sums from the shattered country.
Ukrainian officials refused to comment on the draft deal, but privately they are calling it extortion and a disaster.
Ukrainian MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who saw the new draft, said that he personally “would never vote for it.”
There is also resistance to U.S. pressure.
“Ukraine is not only a territory with valuable and interesting resources for someone, as it was in the First and Second World Wars. Now, on the eve of (and maybe even during) the Third, it is a state with a strong army and society capable of defending its place in the world,” Ukrainian opposition MP Volodymyr Viatrovych said in a statement.
Zelenskyy, who felt the sting of Trump’s rage during a catastrophic White House visit, now prefers to stay cautious and diplomatic.
“Let’s be practical … not nervous. The new draft of the deal needs careful work. We have to act discreetly. So, it is too early to discuss the deal that has already changed so many times and might again change,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference on Thursday. “But I don’t want the Americans to think we’re against something. We don’t want to give any signals that might cause the U.S. to stop aid or intelligence to Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s new strategy
Washington is well aware of what’s happening in Kyiv and Moscow.
In its annual threat assesment report published on Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said both Putin and Zelenskyy are interested in continuing discussions with the United States on how to end the war and have shown a willingness to experiment with partial ceasefires.
“However, both leaders, for now, probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement. For Russia, positive battlefield trends allow for some strategic patience, and for Ukraine, conceding territory or neutrality to Russia without substantial security guarantees from the West could prompt domestic backlash and future insecurity,” the report said.
Kyiv is recalibrating its demands as a response to Trump. Rather than discuss security guarantees with the U.S., Zelenskyy is now talking to European leaders, conceding that Kyiv’s preferred option of joining NATO is being blocked by Washington.
While the U.S. tries to exert maximum pressure on Ukraine, there is no evidence of a similar squeeze on the Kremlin, but Ukraine continues to argue it’s not at fault.
“Ukraine has demonstrated its desire for peace. On March 11, Ukraine agreed to the U.S. proposal to introduce a complete ceasefire. In response, Russia put forward a number of conditions, ultimatums, and all kinds of manipulations; that is, it did not accept this proposal,” said Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi.
“I think that from this very fact we can see that Ukraine is indeed not an obstacle to peace, Ukraine is a partner in achieving peace. I hope that the American side also realizes and sees this,” Tykhyi added.
Meanwhile, Putin has once again upped his demands. Now he wants Ukraine put under temporary rule of the U.N. to conduct democratic elections before engaging in a peace process and sign legitimate documents. Of course, there is no mention of the fraudulent election that keeps Putin in power.
Who get’s the blame
Even though the United States brokered the partial ceasefire, there’s still no mechanism for monitoring it.
The Kremlin has accused Ukraine of hitting energy targets in Russia’s Belgorod and occupied Сrimea since the start of the ceasefire and reports shooting down Ukrainian drones almost every night over Russia. Ukraine calls that Russian “lies.”
Russia has hit Ukraine’s energy facilities at least eight times since March 18, when Putin announced he gave an order not to strike energy infrastructure, Zelenskyy’s communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said in a post on X.
“And every night our air defense forces shoot down nearly a hundred attack drones — and many of those drones were likely targeting other energy facilities,” Lytvyn added.
But again, the issue is where Trump’s heart lies, and there is a growing conviction in Kyiv that he’s leaning toward Moscow.
“We want Americans to be on our side. And even if America today has decided to be in the middle, then the middle is the middle, not closer to the Kremlin. This is important,” Zelenskyy said.
But then he was asked which is closer, the relationship between him and Trump or Putin and Trump.
“Who is closer? I don’t know, it’s hard for me to say … I would say that I don’t have close [enough] relations with Trump to understand how close his relations with Putin are.”
