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Russia attacked Ukraine with kamikaze drones and S-300 surface-to-air missiles overnight, Ukrainian authorities have said, hours after Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump he would sign up to a partial and temporary ceasefire.
Trump and Putin spoke for more than two hours on Tuesday evening, and while the Russian president rejected Trump’s request for a full 30-day ceasefire, to which Ukraine had agreed last week in Jeddah, the pair agreed on a moratorium on strikes on energy and infrastructure targets.
However, shortly after the call ended, air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv. About 45 drones attacked the region around the capital, and anti-aircraft fire was audible across the capital overnight.
Authorities said numerous houses and cars were damaged by drones that fell in Bucha and other areas around the capital, and two people were injured. In the eastern city of Sumy, a drone hit a hospital building requiring the evacuation of more than 100 patients. In a separate incident, one civilian died in a nearby village.
“In many regions we can exactly hear what it is that Russia wants,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, posted on Telegram.
Ukraine also continued its long-range drone assaults on Russia overnight, apparently hitting an oil depot in the southern region of Krasnodar. Russia’s defence ministry claimed it destroyed 57 Ukrainian drones, the majority in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have recently been withdrawing from a small chunk of territory they have occupied for the past seven months.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, told Fox News that talks to finalise the deal between the two sides would begin on Sunday. “We have some details to work out of course, but that will begin on Sunday in Jeddah, and beyond that we’ll move to a full ceasefire,” he said.
He described the call as “two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind”.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform shortly after the call ended that he had had a “very good and productive” conversation with Putin.
He added: “We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine.”
Trump has been keen to do a quick deal to end the war, which many in other western capitals are concerned may involve pressuring Ukraine into an unfavourable deal, as Russia shows no sign of relaxing its maximalist demands for peace.
A Kremlin statement said Putin had issued an order to the Russian military to suspend strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. However, it added that in order to agree to a full ceasefire Moscow would first require all western military aid to Ukraine to cease.
“It was emphasised that a key condition for preventing the escalation of the conflict and working toward its resolution through political and diplomatic means must be the complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence to Kyiv,” the Kremlin said.
Speaking on Fox News after the call, Trump denied that the issue had even come up. “No, we didn’t talk about aid, actually, we didn’t talk about aid at all. We talked about a lot of things but aid was never discussed,” he said.
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Ukraine had initially proposed a ceasefire on sea and in the air, but the US delegation at talks in Saudi Arabia last week pushed Kyiv to agree to a full 30-day ceasefire, which was eventually agreed after eight hours of talks.
Kyiv is expected to agree to the new, more limited ceasefire, but in a briefing with journalists on Tuesday night, Zelenskyy said he was waiting for further information from Washington.
The Ukrainian president, who is on a visit to Finland, said: “I think it will be right that we will have a conversation with President Trump and we will know in detail what the Russians offered the Americans or what the Americans offered the Russians.
“After we get details from the American president, from the American side, we will give our answer, prepare it, and our team will be ready for technical discussions.”
If upheld by both sides, a halt to attacks on energy infrastructure would mark the first partial ceasefire in more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia has been relentlessly targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure for the past three years, while in recent months Ukraine has been increasingly able to hit targets deep inside Russia with long-range drones.
In his first public appearance since the call, Trump told the Fox News interviewer Laura Ingraham: “Right now you have a lot of guns pointing at each other and a ceasefire without going a little bit further would have been tough. Russia has the advantage. As you know, they have encircled about 2,500 soldiers. They are nicely encircled and that’s not good. And we want to get it over with.”
Trump has referred to “thousands” of encircled soldiers before, mirroring a claim first made by Putin, although the Ukrainian military and independent analysts say they have not seen evidence of any large number of Ukrainian troops surrounded during the retreat from Kursk region.
In Moscow, senior Russian officials signalled their satisfaction with Putin’s conversation with Trump. Kirill Dmitriev, a senior aide close to Putin, wrote on X: “It is official now – a PERFECT call.”
