On Monday, Donald Trump told reporters in Washington that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop striking each other's energy infrastructure. Asked how the deal had been reached, he explained it simply: "Because I said, 'You agree'. That's why they agreed, because I said they agree." It was a striking account of diplomacy, one that rested less on signed documents than on presidential assertion.

The claim collided almost immediately with events on the ground. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had struck at least six energy facilities since Trump announced the truce on Sunday, wounding 33 people across the country. "This is what happens when Russia sees the prospect of higher revenues for its war machine," Zelenskyy wrote, linking the attacks to Washington's recent, temporary easing of sanctions on Russian diesel exports. That sanctions decision had already angered European allies, who saw it as undoing years of coordinated pressure on Moscow's economy.

Trump, for his part, acknowledged the discrepancy without resolving it. "Well, I'd have to look at it and see, because there's been violations on both sides," he said, while describing the war, now in its fourth year, as a "disaster" and a "ridiculous" conflict that Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin needed to end directly. He offered no evidence for his claim that 32,000 people had died this month alone, a figure far beyond independent estimates of the conflict's monthly toll. Moscow has given no sign of accepting a pause.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected any ceasefire, even as Zelenskyy insists Kyiv has halted strikes on Russian refineries and is ready to offer guarantees of compliance.