Kremlin says agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv until Sunday
The Kremlin on Friday said President Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop striking Kyiv for a week -- ending Sunday -- following a request by his US counterpart Donald Trump.
Trump had said he asked Putin to halt strikes on the Ukrainian capital and the surrounding area due to extreme cold weather.
Moscow, meanwhile, said the US leader had made the appeal in order to help the Washington-driven negotiation process to end almost four years of war between the neighbours.
Russia's battering of Ukraine's energy grid has left whole districts without heating, with temperatures expected to plunge to around -30C in Kyiv in the coming days, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis.
"I can say that 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," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Neither the US leader nor Moscow clarified when Trump had asked Putin.
"I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week," Trump told a cabinet meeting at the White House a day earlier, adding it was "because of the cold, extreme cold."
This week, Ukraine has not reported the usual large-scale barrage of drones and missiles that Russia has launched at Kyiv throughout the war.
"There were no strikes on energy facilities last night," Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media Friday.
He added, however: "But yesterday afternoon our energy infrastructure in several regions was hit."
Zelensky had earlier welcomed Trump's announcement.
"If Russia does not strike our energy infrastructure –- generation facilities or any other energy assets –- we will not strike theirs," he told journalists, including AFP, in comments released Friday.
- Freezing temperatures -
Still, Ukraine's air force said Moscow launched dozens of drones and a missile at Ukraine at night.
The attacks damaged civilian infrastructure in the northern Chernigiv region and a residential building in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, officials said.
The worst of the cold spell in Kyiv is due to come after February 1, with Ukraine's weather agency warning temperatures could dip to as low as minus 30C in the coming days.
Trump had said he had appealed to Putin "because of the cold, extreme cold."
The Kremlin has been silent on Ukrainians left in the freezing cold amid warnings of a humanitarian crisis and has in the past blamed their suffering on Kyiv.
The pause in Russian strikes, due to end this weekend, comes before Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meeting for a second round of talks in Abu Dhabi.
- No compromise on territory -
This round of talks is expected to focus on the key unresolved issue of territory.
Moscow occupies large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine and demands that Kyiv pull out of the parts of the Donetsk region that it controls -- which Ukraine sees as unacceptable.
No breakthrough has been made on the issue.
"So far, we have been unable to find a compromise on the territorial issue, specifically regarding part of eastern Ukraine," Zelensky told journalists.
He added: "We have repeatedly said that we are ready for compromises that lead to a real end to the war, but that are in no way related to changes to Ukraine's territorial integrity."
Putin has repeatedly said Russia intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine by force if diplomacy fails.
Moscow on Friday announced it had captured another three villages in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
Zelensky also accused Moscow of halting prisoner swaps -- one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv during the war.
"They are not particularly interested in exchanging people, because they do not feel that it gives them anything," the Ukrainian leader said.
(V.Sørensen--DTZ)
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