A highly touted partial ceasefire in Ukraine, brokered by Donald Trump, disintegrated shortly after the end of a phone call between the U.S. president and Russian leader Vladimir Putin during which it was agreed.
An hour after the confab, where the two leaders settled on a very partial 30-day ceasefire halting attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” 40 Russian drones flew into Ukrainian airspace, striking civilian buildings including a hospital in Sumy, in northeastern Ukraine, and an energy substation in Sloviansk, Donetsk region.
“You see? [There is] already an air alert, so this [ceasefire] is already not working,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday night while speaking to reporters.
Zelenskyy also noted that if Russia does not adhere to the fragile ceasefire, Ukraine will fight back: “There won’t be a situation where Russia will continue to shell our energy infrastructure and we won’t respond. We will respond.”
Following Tuesday night’s strikes, Russian officials in Krasnodar claimed that a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil depot Wednesday morning, and the Russian Defense Ministry also reported that several Ukrainian drones had entered Russian airspace.
In the much-awaited call between Trump and Putin, which came after weeks of American diplomatic efforts to find a resolution to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Washington tried to persuade the Kremlin leader to accept the proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, which had already been agreed to by Kyiv.
However, Russia only agreed to a partial ceasefire on civilian and energy infrastructure.
“Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” Zelenskyy stressed, adding that “the pressure on Russia must continue for the sake of peace.”
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