MOSCOW, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to a personal request from U.S. President Donald Trump to halt attacks on Kiev until February 1 to create “favorable conditions” for peace talks, the Kremlin said on Friday.
Trump said on Thursday that Putin had agreed not to fire on Kiev and other Ukrainian cities for a week because of cold weather, but did not say when that period would expire.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not mention the weather in response to reporters’ questions on Friday.
“President Trump did make a personal request to President Putin not to attack Kyiv in the week before February 1 in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations,” he said.
Asked to confirm that Putin had agreed, he said: “Yes, of course, it is President Trump’s personal request.”
It was unclear whether Peskov’s use of the word “Kiev” referred only to the capital – where hundreds of apartments lost heat and power after Russian attacks during the Ukraine war – or to the entire country.
Kiev said it would reciprocate if Moscow dropped its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in February 2022.
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark Trevelyan and Lucy Papachristou, editing by Timothy Heritage)
