Russia, Ukraine trade accusations of infrastructure attacks after Putin-Trump call

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Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of launching air attacks that spark fires and damage infrastructure hours after its leaders agreed to a limited ceasefire to halt energy infrastructure attacks

Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Wednesday, March 19, of launching air attacks that sparked fires and damaged infrastructure just hours after their leaders agreed to a limited ceasefire to halt attacks on energy infrastructure.

Putin agreed to temporarily stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire sought by US President Donald Trump in a telephone call with the Russian leader on Tuesday.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed to the US-proposed 30-day ceasefire before the Putin-Trump call and later supported the more limited ceasefire on energy targets.

But after Russia launched its air attacks early on Wednesday, Zelenskyy urged the world to block any attempts by Moscow to drag out the war.

“Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure and people — right now,” Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said overnight on Telegram.

Regional authorities in Sumy in northeast Ukraine said that Russia’s drone attacks damaged two hospitals there, causing no injuries but forcing the evacuation of patients and hospital staff.

A 60-year-old man was injured and several houses damaged in Russian drone attack on the Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital, Mykola Kalashnyk, governor of the region, said early on Wednesday.

Zelenskyy said that Russia launched more than 40 drones against Ukraine in the hours following the call between Trump and Putin.

Ukrainian military said on Wednesday its air defense units shot down 72 of 145 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks. It added that 56 drones were lost, in reference to the Ukrainian military using electronic warfare to redirect them.

“The Russian attack affected Sumy, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Chernihiv regions,” the military said on Telegram.

Russia’s defense ministry said that its units destroyed 57 Ukrainian drones overnight, 35 of them over the border Kursk region. The ministry reports only how many drones were destroyed not how many were launched by Ukraine.

Authorities in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar said early on Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a small fire at an oil depot located near the village of Kavkazskaya.

No one was injured in the fire, which spread across 20 square metres (215 square feet), but 30 employees were evacuated, the administration of the southern Russian region said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

“The work at the facility has been suspended,” the administration said.

The Russian SHOT news Telegram posted a video of blazes at night at what seemed like an industrial area.

SHOT said the Kavkazskaya oil transshipment point is an important facility designed to transport Russian oil for exports railway and into the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline system.

Reuters could not independently verify the SHOT report.

Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said that for a couple of hours overnight flights were suspended from airports in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Nizhnekamsk, Russia, all hundreds kilometres east of Moscow, to “ensure air safety”.

The agency did not say what was the reason for the suspension, but it usually suspends flights when there are reports of drone attacks. – Rappler.com