Kyiv said Zelensky was being briefed about Tuesday’s 90-minute call between Trump and Putin that saw the Kremlin leader agree to a limited 30-day halt on strikes against Ukraine’s power grid.
Despite both Ukraine and Russia saying they backed a temporary truce, each accused the other of failing to adhere to halt strikes on energy infrastructure.
Ukraine’s defence ministry said an overnight barrage of Russian missiles and drones struck the war-battered nation, killing one person and damaging two hospitals.
“Today Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine’s national railway service said the barrage had hit railway energy infrastructure in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. “So much for a pause in the attacks on the energy sector or an energy truce executed by the enemy!” a railway statement added.
Russia’s defence ministry reported a “deliberate” Ukrainian attack overnight on an oil depot in the south of the country, which they said was aimed at “derailing” Trump’s attempts to broker an end to the fighting.
“These attacks are countering our common efforts,” added Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, referring to the US-Russian talks.
In Washington, US envoy Steve Witkoff said technical talks on a possible deal to end the war would begin in Saudi Arabia on Monday. He predicted that a ceasefire agreement could be reached “within a couple of weeks”.
He told Bloomberg Television that a meeting in the kingdom between Trump and Putin was “likely” but offered no timeline.
Prisoners
Zelensky warned before his call with Trump against making “any concessions” to Russia after Putin in his call to Trump demanded an end to Western military aid to Ukraine during any ceasefire.
Putin told Trump that for a full ceasefire to work, Ukraine must not be allowed to rearm and must halt mandatory mobilisation. Kyiv countered that it would be left vulnerable to further Russian attacks. It wants the US to oversee a ceasefire against energy infrastructure.
Moscow said Russia and Ukraine also exchanged 372 prisoners today, which was planned “as a goodwill gesture”.
Trump’s overtures to Putin and indications Washington will no longer guarantee European security have spooked the United States’s Nato allies and prompted moves towards a steep increase in domestic defence spending.
Zelensky has accused Russia of not being “ready to end this war” and in Kyiv, war-weary Ukrainians were prone to agree.
“I don’t believe Putin at all, not a single word. He only understands force,” said Lev Sholoudko, 32.
In Moscow, locals were more optimistic the talks could bring an end to the fighting — to Russia’s advantage.
“Definitely this is in our favour,” said one Moscow resident, Larisa, 46. “There is no other way. What happened in 1945 will happen now,” she added, referring to the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.
Trump, who says he has an “understanding” with Putin, stunned the world in February when he started direct talks with Russia to end the conflict, sparking fears among allies that he would capitulate to Moscow’s demands.
Trump hailed the call with Putin as “good and productive”.
The Kremlin statement after the talks referred to “energy infrastructure”.
Trump’s interpretation is the broader “energy and infrastructure” which would include all civil infrastructure and not just energy-specific sites like power stations, transformers and oil installations.
‘Count on us’
Trump acknowledged in an interview on Fox News that pressing Putin into a full ceasefire would be tough as “Russia has the advantage.”
Since seizing Crimea in 2014 and launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Moscow now occupies around a fifth of Ukraine.
Washington has made clear that Ukraine will likely have to cede territory in any deal.
The UK and French governments have been trying to assemble a so-called “coalition of the willing” to protect any ceasefire in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron vowed after the Kremlin statement that they would keep sending military aid to Ukraine.
“Ukraine can count on us,” Scholz said.
But soldiers on Ukraine’s front line remained doubtful peace could soon be at hand. “How can you trust people who attack you and kill civilians, including children?” said Oleksandr, 35, who has returned to military training in the Donetsk region after being wounded in combat.
Putin wants formal recognition of all land Russia has captured
Putin wants Trump to formally recognise all four Ukrainian regions that Moscow has claimed as its own in addition to Crimea, Russia’s Kommersant daily reported.
Citing unnamed sources who attended a private business event with Putin on Tuesday, Kommersant said that Putin wanted the US to formally recognise the four regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as part of Russia along with Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.
Russia, though advancing on the battlefield, does not fully control any of the four regions.
In return for recognition and if it happened “in the near future”, Kommersant said Putin would undertake not to lay claim to the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and other Ukrainian territory.
Asked about the Kommersant report on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Putin and Trump had not discussed the idea during their call on Tuesday.
But he confirmed, without elaborating, that Putin had discussed the conflict in Ukraine at Tuesday’s closed-door meeting with members of Russia’s business elite.
Peskov did not confirm, however, whether Putin had floated the idea of the US recognising the four regions in addition to Crimea at the meeting.
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