US President Donald Trump pushed for a quick halt to the Ukraine war in a phone call with Vladimir Putin, while a Kremlin aide said the Russian president reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict’s ‘root causes’.
The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some US weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hour-long call yesterday, according to a readout provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, told reporters in Denmark that he hopes to speak to Trump today about the ongoing pause in some weapons shipments, which was first disclosed earlier this week.
Trump did not immediately comment on the conversation with Putin, but he said on social media beforehand that he would speak to the Russian leader.
‘Root causes’ has become Russian shorthand for issue of Nato enlargement and Western support for Ukraine, including the rejection of any notion of Ukraine joining the Nato alliance. Russian leaders are also angling to establish greater control over political decisions made in Kyiv and other eastern European capitals, Nato leaders have said.
The diplomatic back-and-forth comes as the US has paused shipments of certain critical weapons to Ukraine due to low stockpiles, sources earlier told Reuters.
That decision led to Ukraine calling in the acting US envoy to Kyiv on Wednesday to underline the importance of military aid from Washington, and caution that the move would weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend against intensifying Russian air strikes and battlefield advances.
The Pentagon’s move led in part to a cut in deliveries of Patriot air defence missiles that Ukraine relies on to destroy fast-moving ballistic missiles, Reuters reported.
Ushakov, the Kremlin aide, said the issue of weapons deliveries to Ukraine did not come up during the Trump-Putin phone call.
Ushakov added that while Russia was open to continuing to speak with the US, any peace negotiations needed to occur between Moscow and Kyiv.
That comment comes amid some indications that Moscow is trying to avoid a trilateral format for any peace negotiations.
Five people were injured, including a seven year old boy and a nine year old girl, in a Russian attack on the southern Ukraine port of Odesa, Ukrainian authorities said.
A multi-storey residential building and other civilian infrastructure were damaged, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on the Telegram messaging app. Six apartments were completely destroyed, another 36 were partially damaged, he said.
“The children, who were poisoned by combustion products, were
hospitalised,” Kiper said. The other three injured people, all adults, received medical aid on the site.
The full scale of the attack was not immediately known. There was no immediate comment from Russia about the attack. Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strikes during the war that Russia launched against Ukraine more than three years ago. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine posted on its Facebook page photos showing rescuers carrying children in the dark out of a multi-storey apartment building on fire and firemen fighting the blaze.
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