How many times has Vladimir Putin broken ceasefire agreements with Ukraine?
Donald Trump 's administration has taken a Ukrainian proposal for a 30-day truce with Russia to Vladimir Putin for consideration.
After months of Mr Trump blaming Ukraine for being the obstacle to peace despite Russia's sole role as the aggressor, Washington says the ball is now in Moscow's court.
Ukraine hopes this will show that it has always been Russia that is the one in the way of peace.
But even if Mr Putin agrees to a temporary truce, which is a big if, Ukraine and Europe are clear that Russia has a long history of breaking ceasefire agreements.
Mr Putin, they say, cannot be trusted, even if Mr Trump believes the Russian leader will respect his requests.
Last month, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky handed a document to Mr Trump's Ukraine envoy detailing what he said were the 25 ceasefires Russia has violated since the start of its aggression in 2014. That document was intended to be delivered to Mr Trump.
Below, we look at some of those agreements and how exactly these previous ceasefires broke down.
The Minsk Agreements
After pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 following the Euromaidan revolution, Mr Putin sent plainclothes Russian soldiers into the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and then into the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Fighting quickly broke out as Russia denied involvement. Moscow claimed it was Ukrainian separatist forces.
Nonetheless, by September of that year, Ukraine, Russia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) convened for the first of what would be many peace talks. They were brokered by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
On 5 September, the first of two agreements was signed in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
Its provisions included prisoner exchanges, the delivery of humanitarian aid and the withdrawal of heavy weapons.
But a day later, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council announced that Russian troops had fired at Ukrainian positions at least 10 times. The ceasefire failed to materialise into anything substantive.
By the turn of the year, fighting had intensified. Pro-Russian insurgents attacked Ukrainian positions at Debaltseve, a transport hub near the administrative line between Donetsk and Luhansk, eventually forcing a Ukrainian withdrawal by mid-February.
At that point, a second agreement was underway in Minsk, this time overseen by German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande.
The agreement came into effect on 15 February but lasted only a few minutes, as Russian units fired on a Ukrainian checkpoint near Zolote in Luhansk Oblast, according to Ukraine's military.
For the next four years, Russia and Ukraine agreed to several ceasefires a year, often timed with Christmas, Easter or the harvest, around June/July.
Not a single one held for very long.
Zelensky's 2019 and 2020 attempts
It was just two months after the comedian-turned-politician Mr Zelensky assumed his role as the president of Ukraine that he found himself opposite Mr Putin for the latest round of peace talks.
Ms Merkel and the new French president Emmanuel Macron oversaw the talks.
In a written statement, the countries agreed to the release and exchange of all 'conflict-related detainees' by the end of 2019.
They also pledged to disengage military forces in three additional regions of Ukraine by the end of March 2020, without specifying which regions would be affected.
But it was a deal that was doomed to fail.
'We saw differences today,' Mr Macron admitted at the time. 'We didn't find the miracle solution, but we have advanced on it.'
The following July, another agreement was struck, one that did reduce the level of fighting but never quite stopped it completely.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
37 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Vance slams Newsom over LA ICE riots
By Published: | Updated: Vice President JD Vance ridiculed California Governor Gavin Newsom, as he struggled to handle violent protests in California in response to ICE deportations. The social media duel between the two ambitious politicians was a messaging preview if the two leaders ultimately one day face each other in the upcoming 2028 presidential election. Trump told reporters he even supported the idea of his immigration czar Tom Homan arresting Newsom for doing a 'terrible job' as governor as he returned to the White House from Camp David. Newsom reacted on social media, expressing shock at Trump's comments. 'The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor,' Newsom wrote. 'This is a day I hoped I would never see in America.' 'Do your job. That's all we're asking,' Vance replied on X. Newsom appears eager to take his political career to a national level after he is prevented from running again for governor in 2026, thanks to term limits. Vance, who many expect to be the heir to the MAGA movement remained widely supportive of President Trump's action to send the military to help quell the riots.
The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘It's just daily life': Kyiv residents get used to overnight Russian drone attacks
It only occurred to Iryna Yakymehuk to make use of the local bomb shelter after the Shaheed kamizake drone struck her nextdoor neighbour's fifth-floor flat at 2am on Tuesday, taking a messy bite out of the bedroom. The 22-year-old had returned to her home in Kyiv's Obolon district from the underwear shop where she works as an assistant at about 9pm. She ate macaroni while swiping through some funny TikTok videos before getting into bed at 11pm. Russia has stepped up its aerial attacks on Kyiv in recent days. From the safety of Washington, Donald Trump had warned that Vladimir Putin's response to Ukraine's audacious Operation Spiderweb attack on Russia's nuclear-capable bombers a week earlier 'wouldn't be pretty'. But Yakymehuk doesn't look for that sort of content on TikTok. Air raid sirens, and talk of drones and missiles, have been par for the course for Kyiv's residents since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion three years ago. A car dealership was destroyed by falling debris from a shot-down missile a couple of years ago, but otherwise the Obolon district in north Kyiv, 6 miles from the government buildings in the city centre, has avoided the worst. 'I am a deep sleeper, so I don't normally hear the drones,' Yakymehuk said as she was queueing with others in front of a blue tent where police were taking down details and volunteers were giving out compensation forms to fill in. 'It's just daily life, I don't think about it,' she added, squinting up in the morning sun at the demolition workers dangling from cranes at the corner of the 25-storey apartment building as they sought to make the site safe. The window frame of her bedroom had been blown in, and was dangling at an angle. On Monday the drones did wake her. They seemed to be on top of her, she said. And the persistent, nagging buzz of what seemed to be a large number of them was getting louder, as if someone was slowly bringing a electric shaver ever closer to her face. Then the first massive explosion that made her heart jump. And a second. This one sent 'sparks' flying across her bedroom window on the fifth floor, she said. Yakymehuk ran down the stairs from her flat, as did others, out of the building and to the bomb shelter – a dusty cellar, in reality, below another building, 100 metres away. The door to it is not always unlocked. But it was tonight. There were hundreds in there already, 'maybe 500 people', she said. Others in the queue outside the tent on Tuesday morning said they heard 10 explosions in all. Black smoke was still bellowing from the neighbouring industrial estate at mid-morning. This appears to have been the target. One woman in the Obolon district had been killed. Across Kyiv, four were said to be injured. Seven of Kyiv's 10 districts reported being hit in one of the largest drone attacks on the city since the war started. Yakymehuk might not sleep so well in future. Kyiv could be any European capital during the day. It is a far cry from the opening months of the war, when it resembled European cities during the pandemic. Then the streets were empty. The shops locked up. There was a nervous energy among the soldiers at checkpoints that would make everyone else anxious. And the Russians wanted Kyiv. They had been at the edge of the city and could come back. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion Today, the atmosphere is different. The nightlife is lively, restaurants full, and those with money flash it around. Some people are nervous as it gets dark. That's when the Russian bombers and their drones come, increasingly so in recent weeks, even before Operation Spiderweb. The nerves are especially acute among those who live near factories and industrial estates, which the Kremlin suspects of playing a role in Ukraine's war effort. They listen in their beds for the drones to drop, breathing a little easier as they pass by. But others, maybe the majority, ignore the air raid sirens and assure themselves that the drones won't come for them. They get on with it. It is only when an attack from the air comes to your own doorstep that the reality of the situation bites, said Elvira Neehyporenko, 34, whose red Honda, parked just below where the Shaheed drone struck, had taken a hefty blow, leaving it with smashed windows and a caved-in roof. Neehyporenko lives in the same block as Yakymehuk but further away from the where the drone struck. She laughed as she admitted that when the explosions began, a little distant at first, it was her dog Molly, an American Staffordshire terrier, who had the sense to run into the bathroom. Neehyporenko, whose boyfriend is in the army and fighting in Kharkiv, followed the dog. She stayed there for a while on the cold tiles, before the biggest explosion forced her down to the first floor, where she stayed for fear of what she had heard was a Russian tactic of striking at people as they flee from damaged buildings. Standing watching all the commotion outside the flats mid-morning on Tuesday was Oksana Kodynets, 23, who lives in the apartment block opposite where the drone struck. She was taking her 18-month-old daughter, Maria, for a walk. Her husband is in the army and had been working an overnight shift in the city. She had been alone last night and was a little shaken this morning, she admitted. She had recorded the sound of the explosions, including the largest one, just over the way, and had been listening to them this morning. It was a kind of metallic sound, nothing like she had heard before, she said, as she played it from her phone. Does she worry? 'I did last night,' she said with a half-smile. 'I thought it was going to be the last day of my life.'
Daily Mail
44 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Mystery of Trump's vanishing Tesla as his purchase from Elon Musk disappears from outside White House
President Donald Trump has stashed his red Model S Tesla in an undisclosed location amid his running feud with Elon Musk. Hours after Trump introduced the idea that he may move his new car around 'a little bit,' the pricey vehicle had vanished Tuesday from the prime parking spot it had occupied on White House grounds since he purchased it. A White House official, pressed for details, refused to provide additional information to on its whereabouts. 'We're not playing Where's Waldo,' said the official. 'If you don't see, it you don't see it.' Trump himself was coy when a reporter asked him about the electric vehicle Monday after he spent the preceding days warring with Musk by threatening his government contracts, while Trump ally Steve Bannon brought up Musk's alleged drug use and said he should be deported. The South-Africa born Musk is CEO of Tesla, and also runs X and SpaceX. Musk published and deleted a post saying the feds had additional information on Trump in the Jeffrey Epstein files and even suggested the president should be impeached. Trump said Musk would face 'serious consequences' if he backed Democrats, although Musk later appeared to be using his X account to try to claw himself back into Trump's good graces. Amid the threats and counter-threats, reporters wanted to know if Trump would keep the car and maintain the Starlink internet service installed for the White House by Musk's DOGE aides, despite reported warnings by government security professionals. The Tesla remains a fixation, and there were media reports Trump was considering selling it amid the astonishing breach with his former first buddy. 'No, I haven't heard that. I mean, I may move the Tesla around a little bit, but I don't think we'll be doing that with Starlink. It's a good service,' Trump responded. Asked where he might put it, he responded, 'I have a lot of locations. I got so many locations that I don't know what to do with them all,' Trump jokes. The car, which lists for about $80,000, has Florida tags, giving Trump more street parking options if he moves it back to his official domicile at Mar-a-Lago. He also could store the car at his nearby golf club just across the Potomac River in Sterling, Virginia. Trump says he paid for it with a check. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and longtime aide Margo Martin took the car for a spin May 30, shortly before the massive public spat between Trump and Musk erupted at the end of Musk's 130-day stint as a Special Government Employee. The car's disappearance a tangible demonstration of how Trump's relationship has soured with the world's richest man. Trump took heat in the press for turning the White House grounds into a virtual Tesla showroom at a time when Tesla's stock price was tanking amid fury over DOGE cuts. He called the cars 'beautiful' and gushed about the look of the Cybertruck. 'As soon as I saw it, I said, 'That is the coolest design,' he said.
