Russia halts strikes on Kyiv until Sunday at Trump’s request amid bitter cold

By Olena Harmash

KYIV, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Russia has agreed to a request from U.S. 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 Zelenskiy said on Friday there was no formal truce between the two countries.

He added that Russia had shifted to hitting Ukrainian logistics, after having 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 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.

Zelenskiy 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, Zelenskiy said there were no strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities overnight.

In a separate briefing with reporters, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian air defences had been left depleted because Kyiv’s European allies had delayed payments to the U.S. under the PURL weapons purchase programme.

As a result, he said, U.S. Patriot air defence missiles had not arrived ahead of heavy Russian airstrikes on Kyiv that knocked out power to swathes of the city this month.

RESIDENTS DOUBT TRUCE WILL LAST

Kyiv residents doubted the short energy truce would lead to any lasting improvement, saying they had no choice but to endure a winter that has become the darkest and coldest of the nearly four-year war.

“I trust neither Putin nor Trump, so I think that even if he (Putin) complies now, he will stockpile missiles and will still keep firing,” said Kyiv pensioner Kostiantyn, 61, who didn’t provide his family name. “Putin’s goal is the destruction of Ukraine, and all we can do is resist.”

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had launched a ballistic missile and 111 drones in its latest overnight attacks on Ukraine. Zelenskiy said the missile damaged warehouses of a U.S. company in the northeastern Kharkiv region, without identifying the firm.

Ukraine’s military said it hit several Russian logistics facilities in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast of the country.

A report from Russia’s Defence Ministry showed that the number of Ukrainian drones shot down overnight fell to 18 last night, compared with 168 downed during the New Year night.

Zelenskiy said the opportunity to de-escalate the conflict via a suspension of airstrikes on energy installations was proposed by the U.S. at the Abu Dhabi talks last weekend. 

He added that the date or location for a follow-up round of talks, currently expected this Sunday again in the United Arab Emirates, could change.

Movements towards a ceasefire for the energy sector come at a critical moment. Russian troops are continuing their grinding advance in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and Moscow sends hundreds of drones in nearly daily attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines.

TEMPERATURES TO PLUNGE

Since autumn last year, Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukraine’s power sector, plunging Kyiv into darkness and cold amid one of the harshest winters of the past decade. 

Weather forecasters say that from Sunday temperatures in the Ukrainian capital are forecast to plunge as low as minus 26 degrees Celsius. 

The Ukrainian capital is reeling from the consequences of previous strikes that knocked out electricity and heating for its residents. 

Zelenskiy said 378 residential high-rise buildings remained without heating on Friday.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have so far produced no tangible results. Zelenskiy said the sensitive territorial issue of Donetsk and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, remained unresolved. 

Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the 20% it still holds of Donetsk – about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles) – has proven a major stumbling block to any settlement of the conflict. Zelenskiy has ruled out giving up territory that Ukraine has shed blood to defend.

Zelenskiy said he did not know when the next meeting of Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators would be held. “The date or the location may change – because, in our view, something is happening in the situation between the United States and Iran. And those developments could likely affect the timing,” Zelenskiy said.

But it is important, he added, that the same personnel attend the next round to monitor the progress of what was previously agreed.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said on Wednesday that Trump’s top envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who attended the previous round of talks, would not participate in the next weekend meeting in Abu Dhabi. 

U.S. officials said headway was made at last weekend’s talks but so far no details have emerged. Russia and Ukraine have both said there has been no sign of compromise on the critical question of territory.

(Additional reporting by Anna Pruchnicka, Editing by Daniel Flynn and Mark Heinrich)