Russia strikes Ukraine hospital hours after Trump says Putin agreed to halt attacks on infrastructure
Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia launched a series of drone strikes that struck civilian areas overnight and damaged a hospital in Ukraine following a phone call between Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin during which the Russian leader refused to back a full 30-day ceasefire. Mr. Trump had said that Putin agreed during the call to immediately halt attacks "on all energy and infrastructure" in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday, however, that Russia's attacks continued to hit his country's civilian and energy infrastructure, despite Putin's purported agreement with Mr. Trump. Zelenskyy said Moscow's refusal to halt all strikes on proved the need for increased pressure on Moscow to prevent Putin from prolonging the war.
"This confirms that we must continue to pressure Russia for the sake of peace," he said Tuesday night. "Only a real halt to Russia's attacks on civilian infrastructure can signal a genuine desire to end this war and bring peace closer."
Mr. Trump and Zelenskyy spoke by phone for roughly an hour Wednesday morning, with the U.S. leader describing the call as "very good."
"Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs. We are very much on track," he said in a statement on Truth Social.
The White House described the call between Mr. Trump and Putin as the first step in a "movement to peace" that it hopes will include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and eventually a full and lasting end to the fighting. But there was no indication that Putin has backed away from his conditions for a prospective peace deal, which are fiercely opposed by Kyiv.
According to the Russian government's readout of the leaders' phone call, Putin reiterated that for a full ceasefire, Moscow would require a complete cutoff of all military and intelligence support for Kyiv from the U.S. and its Western partners. Those terms were not mentioned by the White House on Tuesday.
"I do not believe that we should make any concessions in terms of assistance for Ukraine, but rather there should be an increase in assistance for Ukraine," Zelenskyy said Wednesday, reaction to the seemingly unchanged Russian demands.
Shortly after Mr. Trump and Putin wrapped up their lengthy phone call, air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv, followed by explosions as residents took shelter.
Despite efforts to repel the attack, several strikes hit civilian infrastructure, including a direct drone strike on a hospital in Sumy and attacks on cities in Donetsk region. Russian drones were also reported over Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, and Cherkasy regions.
Emergency services said the hospital in Sumy was damaged and that about 150 patients were evacuated, but they did not report any casualties. That drone strike was first reported by top Zelenskyy aide Andriy Yermak, who, in a social media post about six hours after Mr. Trump's call with Putin ended, said, "Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure and people right now," mentioning specifically the attack on the health facility.
Speaking Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of "countering our common (Russian-American) efforts" by attacking Russia's infrastructure. Peskov claimed Russia's military had taken action Tuesday to halt its own planned attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure in the wake of the Trump-Putin call, including shooting down seven of its own drones.
He claimed Ukraine had time to do the same, reversing its own drone attack on Russia, but that it had chosen not to.
The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier Wednesday that its air defenses had intercepted 57 Ukrainian drones over the Azov Sea and several Russian regions — the border provinces of Kursk and Bryansk and the nearby regions of Oryol and Tula.
Separately, authorities in the Krasnodar region bordering the Crimean Peninsula, which was occupied and then unilaterally annexed by Russia in 2014 and remains under Moscow's control, reported that a drone attack there had started a fire at an oil depot.
