Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Donald Trump to broker peace in Ukraine like in “the Middle East” during a phone call, saying if the United States president could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well.”
Saturday’s call came a day after Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy grid, knocking out power to parts of the capital, Kyiv, and nine other Ukrainian regions, which have since been restored.
Diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have slowed in recent weeks, in part because global attention has shifted to brokering a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, Kyiv said.
Trump, who announced the first phase of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday, met Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in August but failed to secure progress on a ceasefire in the European war.
“I had a call with US President Donald Trump. A very positive and productive one,” Zelenskyy said on Facebook, congratulating Trump for his “outstanding” ceasefire plan in the Middle East.
“If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well, including the Russian war,” Zelenskyy added, calling for Trump to pressure the Kremlin into negotiations.
Relations between the two leaders have warmed dramatically since February when they sparred during a televised meeting at the White House.
Trump has since grown more hostile towards Moscow while expressing sympathy for Ukraine.
In September, he wrote on Truth Social that Kyiv should try to “take back” all its occupied territory with Europe’s and NATO’s help.
US first lady Melania Trump said on Friday that she had secured the release of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia after establishing an extraordinary back channel of communication with Putin.
Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five people on Saturday and cut power to parts of southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, according to Ukrainian officials.
Two of the people died inside a church in Kostyantynivka when it was hit by a strike, according to local authorities.
Using ‘Russian assets’
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said “the main work to restore the power supply” was completed but some localised outages were still affecting the Ukrainian capital after Friday’s “massive” Russian attacks.
Ukrainian drone attacks, meanwhile, killed two people in Russia, according to regional officials.
In the Russian border region of Belgorod, a truck driver was killed by a Ukrainian strike, according to local officials.
Moscow has targeted Ukraine’s energy grid each winter since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, cutting power and heating to millions of households and disrupting water supplies in what Kyiv says is a brazen war crime.
Russia denies targeting civilians and says Ukraine uses the energy sites to power its military sector.
Both countries have accused each other in recent months of frustrating progress towards a peace deal.
Russia blames Kyiv and its European allies for the impasse, accusing them of undermining peace negotiations with Washington. Ukraine and Europe accuse Russia of playing for time so it can seize more Ukrainian territory.
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Friday that Russia was taking advantage of the world being “almost entirely focused on the prospect of establishing peace in the Middle East” and called for strengthening Ukraine’s air defence systems and placing tighter sanctions on Russia.
“Russian assets must be fully used to strengthen our defence and ensure recovery,” he said in the video, posted to X.
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