(Reuters) -Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Wednesday of launching air attacks that struck civilian targets including infrastructure, just hours after President Vladimir Putin told President Donald Trump he would pause attacks on Ukraine’s energy system.
In their call on Tuesday, Putin declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire sought by Trump and previously accepted by Ukraine. Putin said he would agree to a limited pause in attacks on energy infrastructure, which was then accepted by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
After Russia launched its air attacks early on Wednesday, Zelenskiy urged the world to block any attempts by Moscow to drag out the war.
“Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure and people – right now,” Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said overnight on Telegram.
Germany’s defence minister said Putin’s agreement to temporarily stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities counted for “nothing”, and Trump would have to win greater concessions.
“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.”
SCORES OF ATTACKS
Both warring sides described scores of drone attacks overnight. Ukrainian regional authorities said homes had been hit in the northeastern Sumy region and the region surrounding the capital, and attacks had hit the power system supplying the railways in the south. Russian authorities said an oil terminal was hit in southern Russia causing a fire.
In Sumy, regional authorities said Russian drone attacks also damaged two hospitals, causing no injuries but forcing the evacuation of patients and hospital staff.
In Kyiv region, authorities said a 60-year-old man was injured. Most of the damage near the capital was in the Bucha district, where police said air strikes destroyed or damaged 18 private houses, 20 flats, 19 vehicles, two shops and a cafe.
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.
Zelenskiy said that Russia launched more than 40 drones against Ukraine in the hours following the call between Trump and Putin. The Ukrainian military said Russia launched 145 drones. Air defences shot down 72 of them and 56 were lost.
“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.
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. Reuters could not independently verify the SHOT report.
Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said that for a couple of hours overnight flights were suspended from airports in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Nizhnekamsk, all hundreds kilometres east of Moscow, to “ensure air safety”.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Gerry Doyle, Michael Perry and Alison Williams)
