Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talked to Donald Trump on Wednesday after Russia continued to strike targets in Ukraine despite President Vladimir Putin having agreed in a call with the US leader to pause attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days.
Russia launched a wave of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Tuesday night, hitting the power supply of a Ukrainian railway line shortly after the Putin-Trump call concluded.
Zelenskyy spoke to the US president ahead of a next round of talks between US and Russian delegations on Sunday in Saudi Arabia.
“Even this night after Putin’s talk with President Trump, when Putin allegedly said he had given the order to stop strikes on the Ukrainian energy targets, 150 drones hit energy infrastructure, transport, unfortunately two hospitals,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference in Helsinki.
“Putin’s words are very different from reality.”
In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump said he had “a very good telephone call” with the Ukrainian president for about one hour. “We are very much on track,” he added, noting that secretary of state Marco Rubio and national security adviser Michael Waltz would release a summary of the conversation later.
Explosions could be heard over Kyiv as the city’s air defences tackled a swarm of Russian drones just hours after the Putin-Trump call concluded.
Six Russian missiles and 145 drones damaged civilian infrastructure across the country and hit the energy supply of Ukraine’s state railway network in the Dnipropetrovsk region. “There are sections without power, but train traffic continues on schedule,” the national operator said.
Russia had targeted that same supply line in the eastern Ukrainian region earlier in the week.
One person was killed and three injured as Russia shelled an apartment building in a settlement in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, and a drone crashed into the roof of a local hospital. Zelenskyy had previously warned that Russia was building up forces across the border from the Sumy region.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Wednesday morning that it had shot down its own drones that were already en route to hit energy infrastructure in the Mykolayiv region of southern Ukraine, after receiving an order from Putin to suspend strikes on energy, following his call with Trump.
An oil facility in Russia went up in flames on Wednesday morning, local media reported, after a Ukrainian drone attack on the southern region of Krasnodar.
“If the Russians would stop hitting our targets, we would certainly not be striking their targets,” Zelenskyy said.
Credit: Source link
