Washington [US], January 30: US President Donald Trump said he asked Russian President Vladimir Putin not to order attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure during the cold weather, and the Kremlin leader agreed.
"I asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and other towns for a week and he agreed. That's great. There were a lot of people saying, 'Don't waste the call, you won't get that done.' But he did it," President Trump said at a cabinet meeting on January 29, according to AFP.
The White House owner stated that the current weather in Ukraine is extremely cold, a record-breaking cold that the country has never experienced. The Ukrainian weather agency predicted on January 29th that temperatures would drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius in the coming days, while authorities race against time to restore electricity, water, and heating.
Russia has not yet responded to Trump's statement. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the US President for this "important statement." "We hope the US can make this happen," Zelensky said, adding that the cessation of attacks had been discussed during a trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi last weekend. A second round of talks is scheduled for February 1st.
"Our team discussed this in the UAE. We expect the agreement to be implemented. The de-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the hostilities," Zelensky wrote on social media.
Mr. Trump said the talks had made a lot of progress. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff announced that many good things had happened in the negotiations, revealing that the parties had discussed a " land deal" while an agreement on US security commitments to Ukraine was "almost complete".
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
