Ukraine and Russia exchanged aerial assaults overnight, just hours after the Kremlin agreed to temporarily halt attacks on energy infrastructure targets, but stopped short of signing off on a broader ceasefire sought by the US.
President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone on Tuesday, with the Russian leader not agreeing to the 30-day truce that Trump has endorsed and Ukraine has agreed to. The White House said a narrower pause on attacking energy targets would go into effect followed by negotiations over a broader ceasefire.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday accused Putin of already breaking his pledge, saying that Russia attacked Ukraine with 150 drones overnight, including strikes on energy facilities.
The Kremlin also condemned an overnight attack on an oil facility in Russia, saying it showed Ukraine’s “lack of will” to reach a deal – although Kyiv was not part of the negotiation talks, and no formal agreement has been signed.
Zelensky said Tuesday that while Kyiv supported the pause in attacks on energy targets, he wanted to know the details behind the proposal that Trump and Putin discussed in their bilateral meeting.
“Putin essentially rejected the proposal of a comprehensive ceasefire. It would be right for the world to reject any attempts by Putin to draw out the war,” Zelensky said Tuesday night.
Zelensky and Trump spoke on the phone Wednesday, in a conversation that Trump described as “very good.” Trump said in a social media post that “much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs.”
US national security adviser Mike Waltz said the US and Russian technical teams would meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for further talks.
“I spoke today with my Russian counterpart Yuri Ushakov about President Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine. We agreed our technical teams would meet in Riyadh in the coming days to focus on implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire President Trump secured from Russia,” he wrote on X.
Overnight, Russia attacked Ukraine with 145 drones, 2 ballistic missiles, and 4 anti-aircraft missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said Wednesday morning. The attacks targeted the Sumy, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. 72 drones were shot down, the air force said.
Civilian infrastructure was struck, including a hospital in the eastern Sumy region and an electricity system powering the railways in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, according to officials and Ukraine’s state railway company Ukrzaliznytsya.
Parts of the railway have been left without power, but trains are running as scheduled, the company said.
The attacks killed one person and injured 14 between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to a CNN tally of casualty figures shared by Ukrainian officials.
Zelensky said Wednesday that “Putin’s words are at odds with reality” following the overnight strikes. “When Putin said that he was allegedly ordering a halt to strikes on Ukrainian energy, there were 150 drones overnight, including on energy facilities. There were strikes on transportation, unfortunately, two hospitals were hit, and on urban infrastructure,” Zelensky said during a news conference in Finland.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday it had shot down 57 drones launched by Ukraine overnight, with 35 of those intercepted and destroyed over the Kursk border region.
Authorities in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar said a Ukrainian drone had caused a fire at an oil depot near the village of Kavkazskaya, Reuters reported. As of Wednesday morning, more than 200 personnel were on the ground working to extinguish the blaze, Russian officials said.
“Unfortunately, we see that there is no reciprocity on the part of the Kyiv regime. There were attempts to strike our energy infrastructure facilities,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said following the overnight attacks.
Putin also said Wednesday that after a series of rapid operations, Russian forces are now “completing” the defeat of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched its shock incursion last August.
Ukraine currently controls about 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of Russia’s Kursk region at most, according to a Ukrainian commander who has been fighting in Kursk for six months.
Ukraine’s assault regiments are no longer on the attack, but they are still trying to hold positions, the commander of Ukraine’s 225th Separate Assault Regiment Oleh Shyriaiev told CNN on Tuesday.
“At the moment, we have to hold the lines to block the enemy’s advance,” said Shyriaiev, who was in one of the first groups of soldiers that entered the Kursk region in August. “The 225th regiment is not surrounded, the 225th regiment is fighting and we have a normal tactical position. It is difficult, but it is controlled.”
Maps published by the Ukrainian military show that Kyiv now controls only a sliver of ground inside Russia near the border. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that while forces have been pushed back, they are not encircled.
“The Russian grouping of troops began to act more confidently in the Kursk region,” Shyriaiev told CNN. “The first reason is their quantitative superiority. The enemy group is much larger than our group of troops. According to our data, the enemy’s grouping in the Kursk direction currently consists of 70,000 soldiers.”
The commander also said that the use of guided aerial bombs and North Korean soldiers contributed to Russia’s “rapid advancement.” He said North Korean troops’ assault tactics had become more modern in recent weeks.
“Even if we are now on the defensive, we are still grinding the enemy. (Russia) still suffers losses, both in terms of human casualties and losses of military equipment and weapons. This should also be taken into account,” he added. “Its losses, both now and over the entire period of the Kursk operation, are higher than the losses in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, much higher.”
