Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of air attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, less than 24 hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump agreed to halt attacks on Ukraine’s energy system for 30 days.
In a long phone call, Putin declined to endorse a 30-day ceasefire endorsed by Trump and accepted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But, according to a Kremlin readout of their conversation Tuesday, Putin did agree “to mutually refrain from strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days.”
This differed slightly from Trump’s post on Truth Social and a White House readout which said Russia had agreed to an “energy and infrastructure” ceasefire.
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Trump and Putin Tuesday agreed to an immediate pause in strikes against energy infrastructure in the Ukraine war, but the Russian leader stopped short of backing a broader 30-day pause in fighting that the U.S. administration is pressing for.
Zelenskyy, who has already accepted a U.S. proposal for a complete ceasefire, said Wednesday that he would speak with Trump.
“Putin’s words are very, very different from reality,” he told a news conference, adding that around 120 strike drones and six missiles struck Ukraine, including its energy facilities, overnight. These came, he said, after Putin “gave the order” to stop attacking Ukraine’s “energy sector.”
In earlier comments late Tuesday, Zelenskyy said Russia fired dozens of Iranian-made Shahed drones at “civilian infrastructure” in several regions across Ukraine and that one had hit a hospital in the city of Sumy, in the country’s northeast.
“It is precisely such night attacks by Russia that destroy our energy, our infrastructure, the normal life of Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said. “And the fact that this night was no exception shows that we must continue to put pressure on Russia for the sake of peace.”
UkrZaliznytsia, Ukraine’s national railway company, said Wednesday that Russia “struck the railway power system” in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region with drones.
Ukraine’s air force said that it shot down 72 drones overnight and that Russia had also launched at least two ballistic missiles.
Russian authorities accused Ukraine of launching drones and said an oil depot had caught fire because of crashed debris in the southwestern city of Krasnodar.
“The pipeline between the tanks was damaged,” the region’s emergency headquarters said in a statement early Wednesday. “The automatic fire extinguishing and cooling system was engaged,” the statement read, adding there were no casualties.
It is unclear if both Kyiv and Moscow intended to strike energy targets.
Still, despite the verbal agreement on the limited ceasefire by Putin, Ukrainians near the front line appear to have no faith in his word.
Outside of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, Ivan Kravchenko, a sergeant in the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 92nd Assault Brigade that follows Russian troop movements in a mobile command center his team built.
“Russia wants to play its game and they are interested in the truce only in order to increase their military power,” Kravchenko told NBC News.
His unit commander, Leonid Maslov, who worked as a tax lawyer before the war, agreed.
“Putin is trying to deceive everybody because he thinks he is a master of spy games and deceit,” Maslov said, as he sat in front of a monitor a nearby safehouse, showing their operation in real time with a Russian mortar position being attacked by Ukrainian bombs.
“Nobody can trust him,” Maslov said of Putin.
Both said they thought Ukraine should be involved in the negotiations. “Putin will proceed with his aggression and Ukrainian people will not agree and will not surrender with that,” Maslov said. “Putin and Trump will sign an agreement, and after that the war starts again.”
However, the U.S. and Russia have hailed the call between their leaders. Trump described the nearly two-hour call with Putin as positive.
“Putin actually said to me, ‘if you’re my friend, I’d hate to see you as my enemy.’ He said that very strongly, but I had with all of that, I had a very good relationship with Putin,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News shortly after he spoke with his Russian counterpart.
The Kremlin also pointed out that U.S. alignment with Russia on a recent United Nations vote on Ukraine was already a “positive example” of their improving relations.
On the third anniversary of Russia’s war with Ukraine last month, the U.S. opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow’s actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and later drafted and voted for a resolution at the U.N. Security Council which called for an end to the conflict, but contained no criticism of Russia.
