Ukraine's Defence Minister said that Kyiv had agreed to the two ceasefires with Russia announced by the United States Tuesday, and that Kyiv welcomed third countries who would support the implementation of these accords.

The United States announced earlier that it had signed separate agreements with Kyiv, and Moscow in order to ensure the safety of navigation in the Black Sea as well as to ban strikes on energy facilities in both countries.

Rustem Umerov, Minister of Defence, wrote in X: "All parties have agreed that they will ensure safe navigation and eliminate the use force as well as prevent commercial vessels from being used for military purposes on the Black Sea."

He did say, however, that Kyiv will consider any movement of Russian vessels beyond the eastern Black Sea to be a violation of spirit of the agreement and, in this event, would have the rights of self-defence.

He said: "All parties have agreed to develop the measures to implement the Presidents' Agreement to ban strikes on energy facilities in Ukraine and Russia."

Ukraine has used long range combat drones in order to hit its larger enemy, Russia's oil infrastructure like refineries. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has used drones and missiles to bombard the Ukrainian front line.

The Russian attacks have been particularly damaging to Ukrainian power plants, which has caused large-scale blackouts. More recently, they also affected natural gas production facilities. (Reporting and editing by Gareth Jones, Ros Russell and Yuliia Dyesa)

(source: Reuters)