WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” but he offered no details on its terms.
Trump’s brief social media post said only that the ceasefire took effect immediately, adding: “Do not break it!”
Moscow did not immediately comment on the announcement, and the White House did not clarify the president’s post.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X: “We discussed the energy ceasefire announced by President Trump. Ukraine supports the ceasefire, and it is important that Russia support it as well. We are awaiting details from the American side.”
Zelenskyy added that he had spoken with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, and he asked Trump to press the Kremlin to agree.
“We are asking President Trump, (to) give them (a) signal, not (to) attack energy infrastructure of Ukraine,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Zelenskyy has not done enough to end the war and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.
Zelenskyy said in response to Trump’s comments that Ukraine could hold elections if Russia agreed to a 60-day ceasefire.
“Give us two months, 60 days off. Total ceasefire, 60 days, and we will organize elections,” he said, adding that Ukraine would be ready to accept whatever choice its people made.
“With all respect to President Trump, it’s up to our society, up to our people to choose one or another leader,” he said. Zelenskyy added that holding an election during the war would be unlawful and that Ukraine would need security guarantees to allow for safe voting.
Ukraine has been under martial law since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022, and the Ukrainian Constitution bars elections while it remains in force. Beyond the legal barrier, a nationwide vote would be vulnerable to Russian attacks, and organizing one is widely seen as logistically impossible, with roughly a fifth of the country held by Russia, millions of Ukrainians displaced abroad and soldiers on the front line. Zelenskyy’s term formally expired in May 2024, but the constitution allows him to remain in office until a new president is sworn in.
The exchange came as Kyiv pressed its campaign against Russian infrastructure, with a drone attack on Sunday shutting down a data center in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, run by technology giant Yandex. It was the third strike on the company’s facilities in four days.
Russia and Ukraine have been waging a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line.
Trump, who on Friday struck a deal with Putin to buy diesel from Moscow in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop striking Russian energy infrastructure.
He has sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has driven up world energy prices. Ukrainian and European officials reacted to the diesel deal with dismay, saying it will help pay for Russia’s war effort.
The Ukrainian drone attack on the Yandex data center in Vladimir caused outages across the company’s services, leaving users in dozens of Russian cities and in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia unable to order taxis or access banking services, according to Russian independent news outlet Astra.
“Operations at the data center have been completely halted. There were no injuries,” said the Yandex Cloud Telegram channel, which provides updates on service availability.
Moscow residents described disruption to everyday tasks. Pavel Belyavskiy, a driver for Yandex Taxi, said it was unclear whether orders were coming through at all, and that on several rides he had to cancel after waiting a long time because he could not reach the passenger.
“I’d press the ‘call’ button to contact them, but nothing happens,” he said, “There’s nothing I can do, so I’m just forced to cancel.”
Igor Mann said he tried to check on an order on the Yandex Market shopping platform but the page was unavailable, and connecting through a virtual private network did not help. “Nothing worked,” he said.
Another Muscovite, Eduard Malyavko, said the outages had “direct impact” and weren’t just about “convenience.”
“It’s also about work,” he said, adding that the outages also affected “healthcare, and everything else.”
On Thursday, a drone attack took a Yandex data center offline in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow. The next day, Ukrainian drones hit the company’s major data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, disabling part of the facility, Yandex said.
Yandex, often described as Russia’s Google, runs the country’s most popular search engine and a wide range of digital services, and is heavily involved in Russia’s artificial intelligence development.
Elsewhere, search and rescue operations ended in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia after a Russian bombing on Saturday, according to Ivan Fedorov, former regional head and co-chair of the regional defense council.
Zelenskyy said 23 people were killed in the attack, including four children. More than 30 people were wounded, Fedorov said, with eight still hospitalized.
A man was killed and two women wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Bryansk border region, local officials said Sunday.
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Blann reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Morton reported from London.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
