Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Wednesday of launching air attacks that sparked fires and damaged infrastructure just hours after their leaders agreed to a limited ceasefire to halt attacks on energy infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to temporarily stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire sought by U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone call with the Russian leader on Tuesday.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed to the U.S. proposed 30-day ceasefire before the Putin-Trump call and later supported the more limited ceasefire on energy targets.
Zelenskyy, in a joint briefing in Helsinki with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, said Putin’s words were not enough and that Ukraine would provide a list of energy facilities it hopes the U.S. and allies would help monitor.
“I really want there to be control. But I believe that the main agent of this control should be the United States of America,” he said, adding that Kyiv would be ready to commit to a ceasefire.
“If the Russians will not strike our facilities, then we will definitely not strike theirs.”
Ukraine’s president said he would speak to Trump later Wednesday and that the U.S. should monitor any potential ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia focusing on energy facilities.
Russia says it shot down its own drones
Ukrainian military said on Wednesday its air defence units shot down 72 of 145 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks. It added that 56 drones were lost, in reference to the Ukrainian military using electronic warfare to redirect them.
“The Russian attack affected Sumy, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Chernihiv regions,” the military said on Telegram.
Russia’s defence ministry said that its units destroyed 57 Ukrainian drones overnight, 35 of them over the border Kursk region. The ministry reports only how many drones were destroyed not how many were launched by Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin say they’ve agreed to an immediate, 30-day ceasefire on energy and infrastructure in Russia’s war with Ukraine, after a lengthy phone call.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of not respecting the 30-day moratorium on striking each other’s energy infrastructure, saying it had tried to attack Russian energy infrastructure overnight.
Peskov told reporters that Russia had called off a drone attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure targets and had shot down seven of its own drones.
“They were just lining up in combat order, six of them were shot down by ‘Pantsirs’ [a surface-to-air missile system] and another one was destroyed by a [Russian] military aircraft,” Peskov said.
“Unfortunately, we see that so far there has been no reciprocity on the part of the Kyiv side. There have been attempts to strike at our energy infrastructure facilities,” Peskov said.
Authorities in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar said early on Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a small fire at an oil depot located near the village of Kavkazskaya.
No one was injured in the fire, which spread across 20 square metres, but 30 employees were evacuated, the administration of the southern Russian region said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
“The work at the facility has been suspended,” the administration said.
German government moves to free more Ukraine aid
Within Ukraine’s border, regional authorities in Sumy in the northeast said that Russia’s drone attacks damaged two hospitals there, causing no injuries but forcing the evacuation of patients and hospital staff.
A 60-year-old man was injured and several houses damaged in a Russian drone attack on the Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital, Mykola Kalashnyk, governor of the region, said early on Wednesday.
Russian forces also attacked the power system of Ukraine’s state railway network in Dnipropetrovsk region with drones on Wednesday morning, the railway company said.
As the war continues, European Union leaders are set to meet Thursday and Friday, with aid for Ukraine among the likely topics up for discussion.
Germany’s outgoing government has agreed to release additional 3 billion euros ($4.68 billion Cdn) in military aid for Ukraine this year after lawmakers passed plans for a fiscal overhaul, a finance ministry document seen by Reuters on Wednesday showed.
The move is widely seen as a breakthrough after outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz had insisted on making the easing of borrowing rules a prerequisite for the additional aid.
