Russia agrees to Trump's request to stop strikes till Sunday, Ukraine to reciprocate
India Today
Russia has agreed to US President Donald Trump's request to suspend airstrikes on Kyiv until February 1 due to extreme cold and Ukraine said it is prepared to reciprocate.
Russia has agreed to a request from US President Donald Trump to halt airstrikes on Kyiv until February 1 amid harsh winter temperatures, and Ukraine said it was ready to reciprocate as Washington pushes for a diplomatic solution to end the war.
But as the Ukrainian capital braces for another bitterly cold spell from Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday there was no formal truce between the two countries. He added that Russia had shifted to hitting Ukrainian logistics. Russia has bombed Ukraine's roads and railways in recent days.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had accepted Trump's request to stop bombarding Kyiv to create "favourable conditions" for peace talks. In recent weeks, Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in Kyiv have left hundreds of thousands of people without heating in their homes for days on end at times as temperatures have dipped below minus 15 degrees Celsius.
"President Trump did indeed make a personal request to President Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week until February 1 in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, confirming that Putin had agreed.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to reciprocate, halting its attacks on Russian refinery infrastructure, saying this was "an opportunity rather than an agreement."
In a post on the Telegram app, Zelenskyy said there were no strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities overnight, and that Moscow's focus had shifted towards strikes on logistics infrastructure.
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