(Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Wednesday of violating a new agreement to refrain from attacks on energy targets, with scores of drone strikes launched hours after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke by phone to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
In the phone call between the U.S. and Russian leaders on Tuesday, Putin rejected a proposed full 30-day ceasefire, which had been sought by Trump and previously accepted by Ukraine.
Putin said he would agree only to pause attacks on energy infrastructure, a proposal that was swiftly accepted by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who nevertheless denounced Moscow for rejecting a more comprehensive truce.
But even that narrow pause appeared in doubt on Wednesday. Moscow said Ukraine hit an oil pumping station in southern Russia, while Kyiv said Russia had struck hospitals and homes, and knocked out power to some of its railways.
Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that the continued attacks showed Moscow’s words were not aligned with its actions, and that Russia was still not ready for peace. He said the United States should be put in charge of monitoring any ceasefire.
“If the Russians will not strike our facilities, then we will definitely not strike theirs,” he said at a briefing in Helsinki alongside the president of Finland.
The Kremlin said it had called off planned attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including by shooting down seven of Russia’s own drones heading towards Ukraine. It accused Kyiv of failing to call off its own attacks in what it called an attempt to sabotage the agreement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Trump understand each other well and were determined to restore badly damaged ties.
EUROPEANS WARY
Trump has long promised to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. But his outreach to Putin has unnerved European allies, who fear it heralds a fundamental shift after 80 years in which defending Europe from Russian expansionism was the core mission of U.S. foreign policy.
Some European leaders said Putin’s rejection of Trump’s proposed full truce was proof Moscow not seeking peace. The offer to temporarily stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities counted for “nothing” and Trump would have to win greater concessions, Germany’s defence minister said.
“Attacks on civilian infrastructure in the first night after this supposedly pivotal and great phone call have not abated,” Boris Pistorius told German broadcaster ZDF. “Putin is playing a game here and I’m sure that the American president won’t be able to sit and watch for much longer.”
But other allies were more hopeful. The Putin-Trump call was “a first step, then we’ll see when the negotiations begin,” said Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, noting that the sides agreed to discuss truce proposals at meetings in Saudi Arabia.
SCORES OF ATTACKS
Attacks on energy infrastructure have been a major part of the war’s impact far from the front lines. For most of the past three years, Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s power grid, arguing that civilian infrastructure is a legitimate target because it facilitates Kyiv’s warfighting capabilities.
Ukrainians say such attacks have subsided somewhat in recent months, with backup power generators that once crowded the streets of Kyiv becoming less prominent since late 2024.
For its part, Kyiv has steadily developed capabilities to mount long-range attacks into Russia, frequently using drones to target distant oil and gas sites which it says provide fuel for Russia’s troops and income to fund the war.
In the attacks overnight, Ukrainian regional authorities said Russian drones damaged two hospitals in the northeastern Sumy region, causing no injuries but forcing the evacuation of patients and staff.
Near Kyiv, a 60-year-old man was injured and airstrikes destroyed or damaged 18 houses, 20 flats, 19 vehicles, two shops and a cafe in the Bucha district north of the capital.
Attacks had damaged energy systems for the railways in Dnipropetrovsk in the south on Wednesday, the railway said.
Ukraine also reported Russian strikes on the city of Sloviansk near the front line around the time of the phone call on Tuesday, which left part of the city without power.
The Ukrainian military said Russia launched 145 drones. Air defences shot down 72 of them and 56 were lost. Russia’s defence ministry said its units destroyed 57 Ukrainian drones overnight.
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 (215 square feet), but 30 employees were evacuated and work had been suspended, the administration of the southern Russian region said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
The Russian SHOT news Telegram posted a video of blazes at night at an industrial area, describing it as an important facility for transporting oil exports by rail and pipeline.
Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said overnight flights were briefly suspended from airports in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Nizhnekamsk, all hundreds of kilometres east of Moscow, to “ensure air safety”.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Michael Perry, Alison Williams and Ros Russell)
