Russia Agrees to Pause Kyiv Strikes Until February 1 at Trump's Request

Russia's Temporary Halt on Airstrikes

By Olena Harmash

Background of the Request

KYIV, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Russia has agreed to a request from U.S. President Donald Trump to halt airstrikes on Kyiv until February 1 amid harsh winter temperatures, and Ukraine said it was ready to reciprocate as Washington pushes for a diplomatic solution to end the war.

Zelenskiy's Response

But as the Ukrainian capital braces for another bitterly cold spell from Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday there was no formal truce between the two countries. He added that Russia had shifted to hitting Ukrainian logistics. Russia has bombed Ukraine's roads and railways in recent days. 

Current Situation in Kyiv

   The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had accepted Trump's request to stop bombarding Kyiv to create "favourable conditions" for peace talks. In recent weeks, Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in Kyiv have left hundreds of thousands of people without heating in their homes for days on end at times as temperatures have dipped below minus 15 degrees Celsius.

Future Negotiations

"President Trump did indeed make a personal request to President Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week until February 1 in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, confirming that Putin had agreed.

    Zelenskiy said Ukraine was ready to reciprocate, halting its attacks on Russian refinery infrastructure, saying this was "an opportunity rather than an agreement." 

In a post on the Telegram app, Zelenskiy said there were no strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities overnight, and that Moscow's focus had shifted towards strikes on logistics infrastructure.

Referring to heavy Russian airstrikes on Kyiv that knocked out power to swathes of the city this month, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian air defences had been depleted because Kyiv's European allies had delayed payments to the U.S. under the PURL weapons purchase programme. As a result, he said, U.S. Patriot air defence missiles had not arrived on time.

"I know that (Russian) ballistic missiles are incoming against our energy infrastructure...and I know that there will be no electricity, because there are no missiles to intercept them," Zelenskiy said, describing his predicament at that time.

    MUTUAL STRIKES 

    The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had launched a ballistic missile and 111 drones in its latest overnight air attacks on Ukraine. Zelenskiy said the missile damaged warehouses of a U.S. company in the northeastern Kharkiv region, without identifying the firm.

   Ukraine's military said it hit several Russian logistics facilities in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast of the country. 

   Zelenskiy said the opportunity to de-escalate the conflict via a suspension of airstrikes on energy installations was proposed by the U.S. at the Abu Dhabi talks last weekend.

He added that the date or location for a follow-up round of talks, currently scheduled for this Sunday again in the United Arab Emirates, could change.

"The Americans said they want to raise the issue of de-escalation, with both sides demonstrating certain steps toward refraining from the use of long-range capabilities in order to create more space for diplomacy," Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv, in remarks released by his office on Friday.

    Movements towards a ceasefire for the energy sector come at a critical moment in the war, which will mark its fourth anniversary later next month.

Russian troops are continuing their grinding advance in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, and Moscow sends hundreds of drones in nearly daily attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines in the country's east and south.

  TEMPERATURES TO PLUNGE FROM FEBRUARY 1  

Since autumn last year, Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukraine's power sector, plunging Kyiv into darkness and cold amid one of the harshest winters of the past decade. 

Weather forecasters say that from Sunday temperatures in the Ukrainian capital are forecast to plunge as low as minus 26 degrees Celsius. 

The Ukrainian capital is reeling from the consequences of previous Russian air strikes that knocked out electricity and heating for its residents. 

Zelenskiy said 378 residential high-rise buildings remained without heating on Friday.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have so far produced no tangible results. Zelenskiy said the sensitive territorial issue of Donetsk and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, remained unresolved. 

   Putin's demand that Ukraine surrender the 20% it still holds of Donetsk - about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles) - has proven a major stumbling block to any settlement of the conflict. Zelenskiy has ruled out giving up territory that Ukraine has shed blood to defend during years of attritional fighting.

    Zelenskiy said he did not know when the next meeting of Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators would be held. But it is important, he said, that the same personnel attend the next round to monitor the progress of what was previously agreed.

U.S. officials have said that progress was made at the talks last weekend but so far no details have emerged, while Russia and Ukraine have said there has been no sign of compromise on the critical question of territory.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said on Wednesday that Trump's top envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who attended the previous round of talks, would not participate in the next weekend meeting in Abu Dhabi. 

"But the date or the location may change – because, in our view, something is happening in the situation between the United States and Iran. And those developments could likely affect the timing," Zelenskiy said.

(Additional reporting by Anna Pruchnicka, Editing by Daniel Flynn and Mark Heinrich)