KYIV: Ukraine on Wednesday (Mar 19) accused Russia of effectively rejecting a United States-backed ceasefire proposal, reporting a barrage of strikes on civilian infrastructure hours after Moscow agreed only to pause attacks on the energy grid.
Washington has been pushing for a full, 30-day ceasefire as a first step towards a wider settlement of the grinding three-year-old war.
But in a 90-minute call with Donald Trump on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said a comprehensive deal would be contingent on the West halting all military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.
While the highly anticipated call did not secure the breakthrough ceasefire endorsed by Ukraine last week, it did result in a scaled-back commitment to halt attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days.
According to the Kremlin, Putin has already ordered his military to pause strikes against Ukraine’s power grid for 30 days.
Russia and Ukraine will also exchange 175 prisoners each on Wednesday “as a goodwill gesture”, with further talks to take place immediately in the Middle East.
But the Russian government said a fuller truce was dependent on its long-standing demands for a “complete cessation” of Western military and intelligence support to Ukraine’s military.
A Kremlin statement also demanded that Kyiv could not rearm or mobilise during any ceasefire.
Just hours after Trump and Putin spoke, explosions rang out and air raid sirens wailed in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “there have been hits, specifically on civilian infrastructure”, including a hospital in Sumy.
“Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire.”
Ukraine authorities later said Russia had launched six missiles and dozens of drones overnight in a barrage that killed one person and damaged two hospitals.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said the strikes showed that Putin was “playing a game”.
“We’ve seen that attacks on civilian infrastructure have not eased at all in the first night after this supposedly ground-breaking, great phone call,” he said.
For EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, based “it is clear that Russia does not really want to make any kind of concessions”.
She also insisted that Kremlin demands to stop arming Kyiv could not be accepted.
Across the border, Russian emergency service officials said debris from a repelled Ukrainian drone attack ignited a fire at an oil depot in the village of Kavkazskaya.
