Russia has agreed to a request from US President Donald Trump to halt air strikes on Kiev until February 1 amid harsh winter temperatures, and Ukraine said it was ready to reciprocate as Washington pushes for a diplomatic solution to end the war.
But as the Ukrainian capital braces for another bitterly cold spell from Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday there was no formal truce between the two countries. He added that Russia had shifted to hitting Ukrainian logistics.
Russia has bombed Ukraine's roads and railways in recent days.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had accepted Trump's request to stop bombarding Kiev to create "favourable conditions" for peace talks. In recent weeks, Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in Kiev have left hundreds of thousands of people without heating in their homes for days on end at times as temperatures have dipped below minus 15 degrees Celsius.
"President Trump did indeed make a personal request to President Putin to refrain from striking Kiev for a week until February 1 in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, confirming that Putin had agreed.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to reciprocate, halting its attacks on Russian refinery infrastructure, saying this was "an opportunity rather than an agreement."
In a post on the Telegram app, Zelenskyy said there were no strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities overnight, and that Moscow's focus had shifted towards strikes on logistics infrastructure.
Referring to heavy Russian air strikes on Kiev that knocked out power to swathes of the city this month, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian air defences had been depleted because Kiev's European allies had delayed payments to the US under the PURL weapons purchase programme. As a result, he said, US Patriot air defence missiles had not arrived on time.
"I know that (Russian) ballistic missiles are incoming against our energy infrastructure...and I know that there will be no electricity, because there are no missiles to intercept them," Zelenskyy said, describing his predicament at that time.
Mutual strikes
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had launched a ballistic missile and 111 drones in its latest overnight air attacks on Ukraine. Zelenskyy said the missile damaged warehouses of a US company in the northeastern Kharkiv region, without identifying the firm.
Ukraine's military said it hit several Russian logistics facilities in the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast of the country.
Zelenskyy said the opportunity to de-escalate the conflict via a suspension of air strikes on energy installations was proposed by the US at the Abu Dhabi talks last weekend.
He added that the date or location for a follow-up round of talks, currently scheduled for this Sunday again in the United Arab Emirates, could change.
"The Americans said they want to raise the issue of de-escalation, with both sides demonstrating certain steps towards refraining from the use of long-range capabilities in order to create more space for diplomacy," Zelenskyy told reporters in Kiev, in remarks released by his office on Friday.
Movements towards a ceasefire for the energy sector come at a critical moment in the war, which will mark its fourth anniversary later next month.
Russian troops are continuing their grinding advance in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, and Moscow sends hundreds of drones in nearly daily attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines in the country's east and south.
