Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump claims Putin ‘kept his word’ despite massive attack on eve of peace talks – UK Times

Prime minister Keir Starmer spoke to US president Donald Trump and the two leaders discussed the situation in Ukraine, including the overnight attacks from Russian forces, 10 Downing Street said.

“The leaders discussed the situation in Ukraine, including the barbaric Russian attacks on the country overnight. Putin’s fierce attacks on critical national infrastructure, including energy systems, were particularly depraved as temperatures dropped below -20C,” the statement from the PM’s office said.

The leaders also recognised the strategic importance of the US-UK military base Diego Garcia, the government added.

“The leaders agreed their governments would continue working closely to guarantee the future operation of the base and speak again soon.”

General Gwyn Jenkins, the Royal Navy’s First Sea Lord, has warned that Russia is maintaining its high level of spending on its Northern Fleet in spite of its losses in Ukraine, thereby posing an ongoing threat to Western powers.

“Russian investment in their Northern Fleet, and in particular, in their subsurface capabilities, is undiminished,” Gen Jenkins told a naval conference in Paris.

“So despite the horrendous cost in terms of national resource and blood to Russia, of their egregious invasion of Ukraine, they have continued to pump resource into their Northern Fleet and their subsurface capabilities,” he added.

Donald Trump has said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “kept his word” and obeyed his request for a temporary pause on attacks against major Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure.

“(The pause) was for Sunday to Sunday,” the US president said, speaking to reporters at the White House yesterday. “It opened up and (Putin) hit them hard… He kept his word on that. One week is a lot — we will take anything,” he said.

Asked if he was disappointed, Trump replied: “I want him to end the war”.

Trump was responding to a question about Russia’s attack on Ukraine yesterday which knocked out heating in cities, including the capital Kyiv, during freezing temperatures, even as Ukrainian negotiators headed to Abu Dhabi for a second round of US-brokered trilateral talks set for Wednesday and Thursday.

Fifa’s ruling executive and European football’s governing body Uefa imposed a global ban on Russia at the start of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when other European nations said they would refuse to play or host Russia’s matches.

The US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are hours away from their second round of peace talks to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

While the talks have been shrouded in anger over Moscow’s latest attack on Ukraine, Zelensky sharpened his tone from previous days and said the work of Ukraine’s negotiators would be “adjusted accordingly” after Russian army exploited the US-backed ceasefire.

Ukraine’s lead negotiator said Ukrainian officials would first hold bilateral talks with US officials in Abu Dhabi to discuss US security guarantees for any peace deal and a post-war reconstruction package, and later hold a trilateral meeting involving Russian negotiators.

Territory remains the main sticking point, with Ukraine resisting Russia’s demands that it cede the remaining 20 per cent of eastern region of Donetsk that Moscow has been unable to conquer since its 2022 invasion.

Zelensky has previously said Ukraine, which is struggling to stop grinding Russian battlefield advances, was ready for “substantive” talks. Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for the failure to agree a peace deal.

The Kremlin has welcomed remarks by Fifa president Gianni Infantino who said Russia’s four-year ban from international soccer tournaments should be lifted after it has “achieved nothing”.

Russian clubs and the national team have been suspended from Fifa and Uefa competitions since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.

Asked about Infantino’s comments, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said they were “very good” and that it had been a mistake to politicise sport.

Peskov said that Russia’s soccer team should now have its rights to compete completely restored.

The second round of talks between Ukrainian, Russian and US delegations will begin in Abu Dhabi later today amid tensions over one of Moscow’s biggest air attacks on Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has already confirmed that the work of Ukraine’s negotiating team will be adjusted after Russia’s overnight attack on Ukrainian energy facilities, which involved a record number of ballistic missiles.

“Each such Russian strike confirms that attitudes in Moscow have not changed: they continue to bet on war and the destruction of Ukraine, and they do not take diplomacy seriously. The work of our negotiating team will be adjusted accordingly,” he said on X, but offered no details.

“The Russian army exploited the US proposal to briefly halt strikes not to support diplomacy, but to stockpile missiles and wait until the coldest days of the year, when temperatures across large parts of Ukraine drop below minus 20 deg C,” he said.

The first round of trilateral talks in late January brought no movement on territorial issues, with Moscow demanding Kyiv cede more land in east Ukraine, which it refuses to do.

A power plant in Kyiv’s eastern suburbs has been seriously damaged in overnight Russian attacks, prompting officials to redirect resources to restoring heating to thousands of residents, Ukraine’s energy minister Denys Shmyhal said.

Shmyhal, writing on Telegram after a meeting devoted to energy issues, said the plant in Darnytskyi had been used strictly for providing heating for people and was heavily damaged.

He described the problems facing Ukraine’s energy system as serious and said repairs would take “a considerable time.”

“This is a war crime by Russia”.

“Given the critical situation, the meeting discussed urgent ways to stabilise the situation,” he wrote.

“A redistribution is being carried out of repair crews and equipment… and we are considering options for redirecting reserve heating supplies to buildings subject to longer outages,” he said.

Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of exploiting a US-backed energy truce to stockpile munitions and using them to attack Ukraine with hundreds of drones and a record number of ballistic missiles, a day before peace talks.

“It was a deliberate attack against energy infrastructure, involving a record number of ballistic missiles,” Zelensky wrote on X, a day after saying Moscow had largely observed the moratorium agreed by the two sides on energy facilities.

“The Russian army exploited the US proposal to briefly halt strikes – not to support diplomacy but to stockpile missiles.”

Zelensky said Ukraine was waiting for the US reaction to Russia’s overnight attack that damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, as it was Washington that requested the short-lived ceasefire.